It is bookkeeping, therefore – our enslavement to it and God’s rejection of it – that seems to me to be the burden of the closing lines of this parable of the Chief Seats. Jesus warns his host not to consult any records he has kept on people: not the Friend/Foe ledger, not the Rich/ Poor volume – and none of the other books either; not Nice/Nasty, Winners/Losers, or even Good/Bad. And he warns him because, as far as God is concerned, that way of doing business is over. It may be our sacred conviction that the only way to keep God happy, the stars in their courses, our children safe, our psyches adjusted, and our neighbors reasonable is to be ready, at every moment, to have the books we have kept on ourselves and others audited. But that is not God’s conviction because he has taken away the handwriting that was against us (Col. 2:14). In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has declared that he isn’t the least interested in examining anybody’s books ever again, not even his own: he’s nailed them all to the cross. Accountability, however much it may be a buzzword now, is not one of his eschatological categories.

Robert Farrar Capon on Luke 14:1-14