Accountants have principles that guide their actions. One of the most important is "realization," which addresses how we recognize completion of a particular transaction. Failure to follow this realization principle is at the root of many of the Technicolor corporate collapses of the last decade, including Enron, WorldCom and a host of others. Simply stated, those companies recognized profits prematurely...long before they were "realized." It's like looking at the car in your driveway and claiming it's all yours, and forgetting about the amount you still owe the credit union. Or looking at next month's paycheck, and claiming it as income today. You won't earn next month's pay until you work for it next month, so treating it as income today is just kidding yourself. And yes, those companies did kid themselves—and others—on a multimillion dollar scale. No kidding.
Let's switch from the balance sheet of dollars and cents to a review of our spiritual balance sheet. And the realization principle. Let's apply it to our relationship with God. Put on that spiritual eyeshade, sharpen that mystical pencil and roll up those sleeves. It's time for a meeting with your CSA—your Certified Spiritual Accountant.
Let's start with an example. Take a look at Philippians 3:4-6. In three verses, Paul lays out his own spiritual balance sheet prior to his experience on the Damascus Road. And what a balance sheet he reports—a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, faultless in his application of the Mosaic law, a zealot in his persecution of the early church. In fact, Paul ticks off six major spiritual assets he thought he'd built up in his pre-Christian days. He was the exemplar of the high performance Hebrew. A perfect resume. A rich balance sheet in his own eyes and, no doubt, in the eyes of those around him.
Funny thing about accounting. Every transaction requires at least two entries. That's why it's called double-entry. Debits and credits. And they have to be in balance. Let's consider Paul's pre-Christ balance sheet. He listed the assets above. Suffice it to say he was "asset rich" by his own accounting. Let's recognize Paul's self reported spiritual assets by a big, fat debit of 1 million spiritual merits.
That completes half of our journal entry. Now we have a decision: where do we book the credit? There are two alternatives. As CSA, we turn around and ask Paul the key question, the one that determines where that 1 million credit entry will go. "Paul, about that 1 million...do you have to do anything more to earn it? Or is it yours for good?"
If Paul says it's a done deal, then we put an entry of 1 million spiritual merits against Paul's equity. "Congratulations, Paul. You are spiritually rich." He need do nothing more. They're all his.
If, however, Paul tells us he still has to perform to keep those spiritual merits, we should put the offsetting entry as a liability. When we look at Paul's pre-Christian life, I believe that's where he would've put the entry. The liability account might have been labeled "Continued performance that I owe God." Paul wasn't at the point (before the Damascus Road) where he was going to rest on his merit, or anyone else's. He was in performance mode. Any spiritual merit he thought he'd accrued was conditional on future performance.
Let's fast-forward to Paul as author of Philippians. Chapter 3:7-9. Here's what Paul says about the entries to his spiritual balance sheet after he encountered the risen Christ:
"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having the righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith."
If I was Paul's CSA, and he showed up at the bazaar to talk to me about his new faith, here are the entries I would've made on his spiritual balance sheet:
First, write off his 1 million in spiritual merit. Why? Because he's told me they're worthless. All those good works that he had built up as a Hebrew of Hebrews were "rubbish." That's pretty clear. So Paul's balance sheet at that moment has a big fat zero in assets. He is spiritually insolvent. Bankrupt.
But that's not the end of the story. Paul tells us in verse nine that there's a new asset on his balance sheet. He's labeled it "the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." In fact, he goes one better, and identifies the author of that righteousness—Jesus Christ. So, as CSA, I create a new asset category, called "The righteousness of Christ." And I debit Paul with Christ's earned righteousness. There's a lot of zeros attached to that virtual entry, since what Paul is telling us is that the righteousness of God's Son has been imputed to him. He's a spiritual billionaire.
Remember. Every transaction has at least two entries. So Paul gets this big asset on his balance sheet through the work of his Savior. Now where do we book the credit entry?
The only way to answer that question is for us to ask Paul if that righteousness is conditional. If it is—if he has to perform flawlessly to keep it—then there's an equal and offsetting liability, called "future performance." Said another way, as long Paul keeps God happy, Paul keeps the asset. Once he displeases God, God starts writing down the asset. His righteousness is still to be realized--not realized as of now. An economist might say that Paul has an "option" on salvation, but that option has not yet matured.
Alternatively, if that righteousness that has been imputed to Paul because of Christ's work is permanent, then there is no remaining liability. Paul has assurance that the asset that has been gifted to him is, in fact, his. He has all legal right to it. There are no future claims that can be made against it. He can present his spiritual balance sheet to God the Father as his own. He is no longer bankrupt. In fact, he is a wealthy man—the wealthiest man in the universe. Because his balance sheet, his spiritual credit rating, is the same as Jesus Christ's, the God-Man, the second person of the Trinity, the Lamb of God.
Think about your own spiritual balance sheet. Too often even Christians are going through an accounting that is not of God. We take the good deeds of the day and we mentally book them as assets on our own spiritual balance sheet. We take our sin and we credit it to our liabilities. And at the end of the day, we try to figure out if our spiritual balance sheet has increased or decreased. We go through the emotions that come with that focus on performance, and earning our own righteousness before God. We're like Paul before he was saved, doing it all in a vain attempt to get right with God.
The gospel says, as Paul reminds us above, that once we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and as our Lord, once we have committed our life to him, our spiritual balance sheet is immediately transformed. We receive the biggest asset infusion that the universe has ever seen. Everything before—our sin, our self-righteousness, our feeble attempts to make ourselves right with God—is wiped out.
Then Jesus infuses our balance sheet with his own righteousness. No liability. No optionality. It's not a future promise. It's today's reality. The now condition. It's a wealth that we can then live out of, in gratitude to our Lord.
The realization principle. Christ's work has been accomplished. Redemption has been both accomplished and applied. For me. For you. If we believe. If we repent. If we pick up our cross and follow.
Chris Joyce
I love where you find your inspiration - to take something like accounting and weave it into this wonderful and encouraging write.
Thank you.
Posted by: david swinson | February 04, 2008 at 01:46 PM