AA Creates a Sin Conscience

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. 3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. 4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Hebrews 10: 1-4)

I have written before that the Twelve Step program is a modern manifestation of the Old Covenant, in which man beholds demands, and if he can keep the rules, work the program, then he can be blessed.

Yet the Ten Commandments, in fact the entire law of the Old Covenant, was not given to us so that we could be righteousness, but rather to show us as sinners in need of a Savior:

"19Now 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. 20Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3: 19-20)

Through the law, we have knowledge of sin.

Yet the law cannot make us holy:

"7What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 8But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead." (Romans 7: 7-8)

and

"Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers," (1 Timothy 1: 7)

The Law was never God's best, but only came in alongside as a part of a covenant which would bring the Israelites to the end of themselves:

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

and then

"Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." (Galatians 3: 24)

So, the law conceived the knowledge of sin, and the sacrifices were provided for man to atone for his sins.

Yet Jesus came, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29), has perfected us forever in our conscience (Hebrews 10: 14)

We have no reason to worry about our sins in any way, shape, and form. Because of all that Jesus did at the Cross, God invites us to reckon ourselves dead to sin, but alive in Christ through His righteousness (Romans 6: 11-12)

As long as men and women believe that they must work a program, take their inventories, and goo through the Twelve Steps in order to be sanctified, they are perpetuating a sin conscience, one in which Christians remain occupied with themselves instead of looking at Christ and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 10: 4-5)

This sin conscience is inescapable as long as we refuse to rest in the finality of the Cross. I cannot tell you the number of believers in the Body of Christ we live weak and beggarly lives (Galatians 4: 9).

I remember one man who served as a missionary to many South American communities, yet he was in bondage to habits which created frustration and bondage in his lives. For all of his knowledge about the Bible, he had never rested in the fullness and finality of all the Jesus did at the Cross!

One woman was telling me that she had stopped sharing at the Celebrate Recovery meeting. I chided her that she needed to leave altogether, because as long as anyone continues to attend and promote Twelve Step programs, they are aiding and abetting a system of beliefs which do not abide in the doctrine of Christ (2 John 9).

Another woman claimed without reserve that she was still in recovery. There was no life or sparkle to her walk. A great reserve, and a calculated respect for the petty fears and tremors of this life, marked much of her conservations with me.

Whatever happened to the blessed hope of Paul's declarations in Romans 8?:

"36As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

 

"37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. " (Romans 8: 36-37)

 

We do not worry about being led as lambs to the slaughter, because Jesus, the Lamb of God, died on the Cross, removing all our sins (Colossians 2: 13). He became sin that we would receive His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5: 21), and every other good  thing with Him (Romans 8: 31-32)

 

However, if we do not receive Him as our full and final sacrifice, we cannot receive from Him anything else:

 

"6But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. 8A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1: 6-8)

 

I submit that James was exhorting his fellow Jewish brethren not to mix covenants. We are no longer under law, and thus no longer any apprehension of guilt or fear, because the Father of Lights has given us Jesus, the Light of the world (John 8: 12), to die for our sins, rise for our justification, and intercede on our behalf until He comes again.

 

In Hebrews 12, the writer invites everyone of us to put aside every sin which weighs us down. Why? Because all our sins have been paid for in full, forever, and thus we no longer need hold onto any sense of sin conscience in our lives.

 

For us to have any fear of wrongdoing, or to carry about ourselves a sense of guilt and shame is to insult what Jesus has done for us, and by extension to argue that He did not complete a perfect work (John 17: 3-4).