“Accountability”
Matthew11:16-30
“Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”- Matthew 11:21
Accountability, we are answerableto what we know. This is an important principle in Scripture that Jesus Himself describes.
It is one thing to error without knowledge and quite another to error with. It is the difference between making an illegal U-turn without seeing the sign and making one with. Both break law, however, the latter is intentional. It is likesin and a trespass.
A trespass is when you see that line that you are not supposed to cross, and you cross it anyway. That kind of trespass is intentional and carries more liability in a court of law. That is the principle laid out in Matthew 11:21.
Sin means “missing the mark.” It is an archer’s term. The goal isto hit the bull’s-eye, and when missed the judge declares “sin, you’ve missed the mark.” In the realm of God, the mark is perfect holiness. We have all missed that mark, so we are declared “sinners.”
The way it works is that God is perfectly righteous; therefore, we must be declared righteous through the Cross to be brought back into fellowship with Him.
Jesus was the only Perfect Man to ever live, He was sinless; and so, at the Cross, Hisperfect righteousness was imputed to us in exchange for our sin imputed to Him, and then He died in our place. For the wages of sin is death. Therefore, all who have believed on the name of Jesus, and His work on the Cross, are declared righteous and have eternal life.
However, His work on the Cross of Calvary must be received by faith; and we are accountable for that knowledge. We are answerableto the revelation given us.
This is the accountability principle described in our passage. “Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”On Judgment Day, the citizens of Chorazin and Bethsaida will be accountable to the testimony of Jesus Himself and the very works that He did in their towns.
The applicable question for us today is how much accountability do we have? We live in anation where there are churches in every town, and Bibles upon Bibles to read. How much accountability do we have at Calvary Chapel Echo Park where we have exposited every chapter of every bookin the Bible twice?
We are accountable for what we know. It is one thing to miss the mark without knowledge and quite another to miss it with.
