Many of us have experienced accountability gone wrong. A group of men meet regularly to talk about their struggle with pornography. The first guy raises his hand and admits to failing this week. The second guy does the same. As the circle gets completed the batting average is identical. There is not a single testimony of success. When this happens, something disturbing often occurs. Rather than men repenting of their sin, their sin is subtly affirmed. If everyone is struggling with lust, the thought surfaces that maybe lust isn’t that bad after all. Guys walk away from the meeting feeling much better about themselves, but entirely for the wrong reason. No authentic transaction with the cross has occurred. Sin has not been rejected; it has been normalized.
Men need the X-ray vision to see straight through this pattern of deception. Joining a crowd to lynch a man is no better than committing an act of individual murder. There is no safety in numbers when it comes to sin. There is no place to hide. The Bible is clear that each of us will face a personal judgment. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:10, ‘For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.’ To resist sin, we must always have this judgment in view.
Likewise, to combat the normalization of sin, men must keep in mind that our model of righteousness is not our peer-group, but the person of Jesus. Although we may never attain to His absolute purity, we can never be content with anything less. It is, after all, to His image that we are being conformed (cf. Rom. 8:29). Jesus is the standard of holiness in heaven; He is also the standard of holiness on earth. We cannot permit an attitude of indifference to blind us from this truth.