The Twelve Steps: "The Ministry of Condemnation"

"4And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: 5Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; 6Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." (2 Corinthians 3: 4-6)

I am learning more about this wonderful yet very integral truth. The Law, the Ten Commandments, were never given to justify man, but to bring man to the end of himself:

"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." (Romans 3: 19)

Mouth stopped, standing guilty before God.

The Law was given to bring us to faith in Christ:

"23But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. 24Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." (Galatians 3: 23-25)

The Law is meant to kill us, to bring us to the end of ourselves, so that we can let the Spirit of God live through us.

The Twelve Steps is just a modern variation of the Ten Commandments, a set of demands on mankind which no one can keep.

The more dutifully someone tries to work this "simple program", the more complicated it gets. AA does not leave a set of rules for members to follow. "Self-centered", "dishonest", "self-seeking", "frightened" are so vague as to be meaningless. A life of taking your inventory every day brings forth a sin conscience, a sense within yourself that you have to watch your steps, make sure that you never fail.

Inevitably, this program turns people ino Pharisees or failures. The Pharisees take their inventory, yet more importantly they force you to take yours over and over. If they step out of line, the "newcomer" cannot say anything, because he is "new". Then there are the "failures", the growing number of people who end up in the meetings, realizing that they either cannot get a handle on their drinking, or they find that all the anger and fear and resentment cannot be wiped away.

The source of our problems does lie with ourselves, but the answer is not to die to self as much as to receive a new life, not just a new set of rules to live by, a set of rules which inevitably turns us back to ourselves, and we can do nothing about ourselves except cry out for a Savior.

This Savior wants to write his laws on our hearts and lead us naturally from within. This is the life that men and women seek, not a set of rules on the outside which can do nothing about the inside, but an inner life and leading from the inside which transforms the person from the outside.

The "old-timers" in AA meetings will go on and on about the fact that no one can work the next eleven steps "perfectly", but the impression one gets from the program, especially the warning which cautions "to drink is to die", turn those "Twelve Suggestions" into "Twelve Must Dos".

The Twelve Steps, like any other system, is a ministry of condemnation:

"7But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:" (2 Corinthians 3: 7)

The Law had a glory, but the glory is done away in Christ. Hebrews confirms this wonderful truth:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

"And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

"For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

"In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away." (Hebrews 8: 10-13)

There was an Old Covenant, the Law of Moses with animal sacrifices to atone for sins (Exodus 20). Under the New Covenant, with the blood of Jesus Christ shed once and for all for all our sins, all we "have to do" is believe. And all the blessings of God flow in our lives, starting with righteousness, then peace, and finally joy (Romans 14: 17), and God the Father gives us all things with His Son, too (Romans 8: 31-32)