Live Without Keeping Accounts!

February 26, 2026

Live Without Keeping Accounts!

Keeping score does not work in relationships with family, friends, or co-workers.  And yet, many people are intent on keeping track of both the good things that pass between the two of you as well as the hurtful things.

They treat relationships with people like a ledger or a score card.  Their thinking is something like, “That makes seven good things and five hurtful things.”  They give you some cookies and they expect you will give them some cookies.  They give you a compliment and they expect a compliment from you.  You hurt them and they believe they are justified in hurting you.  Someone abuses them and they believe they have the right to abuse someone else.

I know someone who keeps account of all the blessings they have given and received, all the criticisms they have given and received, and all the gifts they have given and received.  They keep account with every person in their circle of relationships.  That approach to relationships becomes exhausting as well as confusing if your score card fails you.

In his letter to the churches in Rome, the Apostle Paul describes the marks of a Christian life.  One of the things he addresses is keeping accounts in our relationships.  In Romans 12:17 Paul writes; “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.” 

Paul addresses keeping a score card in our relationships because there were more than a few Christ-followers in the churches in Rome who were keeping score.  Paul knows keeping score does not work in relationships where there is patience and forgiveness and real love.

We hear the warning to not keep score in other parts of the Bible.  In Proverbs 20:22 we hear; “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will help you.”  Instead of keeping score of what another person is doing for and to you (especially evil things!), we are called to wait for the Lord God to help us in that situation or relationship.

In I Peter 3:9 the Apostle Peter writes; “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse, but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.  It is for this that you were called—that you might inherit a blessing.”  Peter is very aware that evil and abuse creep into our relationships with our families, among our friends, at work, on the team, in school, around the neighborhood, etc.

Peter recommends that rather than keeping score and responding in a like manner, that we repay evil and abuse with a blessing.  To be clear, he does not intend us to stand there and continue to be hurt over and over again.  Nor does he suggest that if we are continually being abused by someone that we stay in that relationship and continue to be abused. 

However, Peter does suggest that rather than exchanging pain for pain, harm for harm, shame for shame, abuse for abuse, insult for insult, betrayal for betrayal, put down for put down, snarky comment for snarky comment that we instead respond by repaying with a blessing.

Someone who keeps score will find Peter’s counsel to “repay with a blessing” very difficult to implement.  The longer they have kept score in their relationships, they more difficult it will be for them to “repay with a blessing.”

The only way out of this pattern of keeping score is to do what that Bible says. 

First, we do what the Apostle Paul says in the book of Romans.  We focus our attention and energy of what is “noble.”  In other words, we focus on what is honorable, admirable, gracious, respectable, and kind in the other person.

Second, we do what King Solomon says in the book of Proverbs.  We focus our attention and energy on the Lord God (rather than on the other person) as we “wait for the Lord” to help us.  In other words, our attention is not on the other person or what they have said or done but is focused on waiting for the Lord to help us.  

If you are keeping score in a relationship with someone, it may be time to shift your focus just a bit.  How can you shift your focus from everything that is “wrong” with the other person to something that is “good” about that person? 

Try writing down one good thing about that person (without any duplicates!) every day for the next 21 days.  In doing so, we wait on the Lord while seeing something “noble” in that person.  The Holy Spirit can use small things like a shift in our focus to transform a relationship from keeping score to offering blessing. 

When that happens, our heart will fill with delight in what the Lord is doing. 

Take Delight In The Lord!

Doug