Cast Out Bill W.!

"Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.

"So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." (Galatians 4: 30-31)


AA brings people back into bondage because the Twelve Steps create this veneer of having to "do something" in order to get to God, or to be able to access Him.

Jesus Christ dispels this lie with one verse:

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. " (John 14: 6)

There is no other way but through Jesus Christ, and by His death and resurrection, we are taken from dead in our trespasses to alive and seated in heavenly places in Christ.

We do not need to take any steps, because God has brought us to Himself:

"And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;" (2 Corinthians 5: 18)

This truth may assault the religious training of some people, but God is no longer angry at the world. He has imputed all the sins of the world to His Son, who is the propitiation of our sins (1 John 2: 1-2).

God is not mad at anyone any more. (Isaiah 54: 9) There is a hell, however, for those who refuse to believe on Jesus, whom God has sent to be our substitute for our sins, and to be our mediator before God the Father in heavenly places.

At any rate, the law was not given to man in order to make us holy, but rather to prove to us that no one can be holy in his efforts, that he requires righteousness imputed to him:

"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." (Galatians 3: 19)

then

"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Galatians 3: 20)

Now this verse throws off seminarians and pastors:

"Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:" (Romans 5: 20)

In effect, any set of rules devised by man to get us closer to God will actually magnify our distance from God, or it will cause us to be alienated in our minds that God is angry with us.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans8: 38-39), and He has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13: 5)

As children of God, we are no longer called to grow in knowledge of the law, but rather we are called to know Him and His grace, for the two are inseparable.

The law is contrary to grace, by the way:

"Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace." (Galatians 5: 4)

Grace is higher than law, and for that reason returning to the law implies that we fall from a higher place.

God's grace teaches us to live godly lives (Titus 2: 11-14). Law of any kind will actually bring out the very thing that we want to remove from our lives: sin.

So, just as Abraham and Sarah cast out the bondwoman Hagar, just as Paul exhorts the Galatians to remove any trace of the law from their lives, so too every child of God who counts on his sonship in Christ must cast out Bill W. and the Twelve Steps, which do not bring us closer to God, but in fact frustrate His grace from working in our lives.