Danny ChaiJunior year, John once came over to eat at Yost (I think I can count the number of people who visited us at Yost that year on 1 hand. Not a popular dorm to visit) and during his prayer for the meal, he prayed for a “victorious life over sin”.
For some reason, that phrase has stuck with me for years, and I have prayed for the same thing also, off and on, both for myself and others: a victorious life over sin. Problem is, when I stop and think about it, I realize that I have no idea what that means, or what it looks like.
I’m overstating it a tad. I have some idea. But it’s not super clear. So we ask the same questions every week in accountability. And for some of the issues, I despair of ever conquering them; I think I’ll be struggling with them for the rest of my life. Maybe not outwardly, but certainly inwardly. The thing is, Jesus says that the inside is all that matters. So I don’t think I’ll ever conquer these things in the ways that really matter.
Which makes me wonder, what is the ultimate goal of accountability? What are we expected to achieve? Is it just like managing an incurable disease, the way you might manage unaggressive prostate cancer? Or do we hope to actually conquer our sin? If so, what does that mean? Reading St. Paul, it seems like he constantly struggled with his fleshly nature. But he also talks of not sinning anymore. If sin is about the inside, like Jesus says, and we will always struggle with or sinful insides, what exactly does it mean to conquer sin in our lives?
I’ve been praying that prayer for a victorious life over sin for a long time, but I don’t know what that looks like. I know what I feel – that I’ll be sinful on the inside as long as I live, and for me, I need accountability because I trust myself about as far as I can spit, and I want to minimize the effects of my sinful nature. But is that really a victorious life over sin?