Theopedia

Accountability

“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another.”

— Hebrews 10:24-25

Definition

Accountability is the mutual duty of believers to watch over, exhort, and, where necessary, correct one another, rather than pursuing holiness in isolation from the church. It rests on a recurring New Testament pattern: believers are to provoke one another to love and good works (Heb. 10:24-25), exhort one another daily (Heb. 3:12-13), restore one who is overtaken in sin (Gal. 6:1), and confess their faults to one another (James 5:16). This ordinary, informal watchfulness among believers is distinct from church discipline, the church’s formal response when private admonition fails to produce repentance.

Biblical Basis

Charles Hodge locates this mutual watchfulness in the church’s own purpose as “the communion of saints.” The Christian life, he argues, is not developed in isolation: “it is only in contact and collision with his fellow-men that his powers are called into exercise and his social virtues are cultivated.” It is “by the Church-life of believers, by their communion in the worship and service of God, and by their mutual good offices and fellowship, that the spiritual life of the soul is developed,” which is why the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together… but exhorting one another” (Heb. 10:24-25).1

William Ames catalogs this mutual exhortation as a specific duty of “justice and charity toward our neighbour,” binding believers “to teach and admonish… to observe others that we may whet them to love and good workes” (Heb. 10:24), “to exhort them also daily” (Heb. 3:13), “to comfort them against sorrow and griefe” (1 Thess. 4:18), “and to correct them in a brotherly manner, if they be overtaken with some offence” (Gal. 6:1).2 Ames does not treat this correction as unconditional: it is warranted only “when we certainly know that the evill to be corrected is committed, when there is hope of some fruit, or good to follow upon our correction… and when there is fit opportunity in respect of time, or person, and the circumstances.”3

Thomas Watson counts association with other believers among the ordinary means of growing in holiness: “Associate with sanctified Persons. They may by their Counsel, Prayers, holy Example, be a means to make you holy: as the communion of Saints is in our Creed, so it should be in our Company” (Prov. 13:20, “he that walketh with the wise shall be wise”).4 James’s own instruction to “confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another” (James 5:16) makes this mutual exposure, not private religion alone, part of ordinary Christian life.

Objections and Responses

Does James 5:16 support confessing sin to a priest rather than to fellow believers generally? John Calvin cites James 5:16 for the general, mutual duty of believers to “confess their sins one to another, and to pray one for another,” and argues that Scripture nowhere restricts this to a separate priestly office or extends it into intercession by the dead or the saints. Intercession before God belongs to Christ alone; mutual confession and prayer among believers “derogates in no respect from the sole intercession of Christ, because all trust to that intercession in commending themselves as well as others to God.”5

Doesn’t holding others accountable invite prying, gossip, or self-righteous policing? Ames’s own conditions for “brotherly correction” answer this directly: correction is fitting only when the fault is certainly known rather than suspected, when there is real hope that correction will do good (the offender’s own amendment, or the protection of others from the same fault), and when the timing, person, and circumstances are actually fit for it.3 Watson likewise frames association with other believers as pursuit of mutual sanctification, not surveillance: its aim is that others’ “Counsel, Prayers, holy Example… be a means to make you holy.”4

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XVIII. Sanctification,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 229. ↩

  2. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity: Drawne out of the Holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters Thereof, and Brought into Method (London: Edward Griffin for Henry Overton, 1642), book 2, chap. 16, “Of Justice and Charity Toward Our Neighbour,” 348-349. ↩

  3. Ames, Marrow of Sacred Divinity, book 2, chap. 16, 349. ↩ ↩2

  4. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 144. ↩ ↩2

  5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 20, 175-176. ↩