Righteous By Faith, Not Twelve Steps

"For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith." (Romans 1: 17)

The AA book infuses in members that the work is not done, that any sense of well-being or right-standing depends on what we do.

Yet if you are dead in your trespasses, there is nothing that you can do to not be dead.

A dead man cannot produce life on his own. He needs life.

This death manifests itself as alcoholism, drug addiction, but also as an obsession to religious fervor and charity.

Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge of good cannot give us life anymore than the knowledge of evil.

We need life, and that more abundantly, and this life we receive from Christ Jesus.

Now, why did I have a hard time believing and receiving the promises of the Word of God?

Because of the AA cult, the Galatianism which suggests that Jesus did indeed save us, but as for everyday life, we are on our own.

As for sin in the flesh, we must do everything in our power to do what we can about the sins in our lives, that if we try hard enough, if we are dedicated in our religious efforts, then we can improve our lives, we can claim progress, not perfection.

Yet in Christ, we have been perfected forever (Hebrews 10: 14). There is no progress when you have been perfected.

By the way, "perfected" is the same word which Jesus spoke when He died on the Cross: "It is Finished!" (John 19: 30)

However, there are millions of Christians who attend Twelve Step programs, whether in secular AA meetings or in Celebrate Recovery groups in local churches.

This program is a insult to God and His Son, as if the work which Jesus did at the Cross was not a perfect work. If men and women do not believe that Jesus did it all, then He did nothing at all. There is no mixture. Jesus does not stand on the same level as Moses and Elijah, and the AA frauds Bill Wilson and Robert Smith certainly do not command any respect or value on par with Christ Jesus.

The matter of righteousness is no joke. We are not righteous because of what we do, but because of what Jesus did at the Cross.

For years -- YEARS -- I struggled with believing that Jesus was on my side. There were times of great wealth and honor in my life, yet within I was chronically fighting with all the hurts and upsets in my life. I was convinced that I had to have a guarded sense of peace in my head, or that I had to think about God all the time. Looking back on all the hardships which I had faced, I realize that if we add one thing to what Jesus did, we will endure nothing but a fearful looking after of judgment, because there is no further sacrifice for sins. Nothing left at all.

Either we believe that Jesus has taken care of everything, and throw anyone and anything which resists this truth, whether it is our parents or any cult-like teaching which we had endured, or we must reject Christ and all that He said and did on our behalf as we waste our time and energy running after pretended source of help.

AA is a fraud which creates maddened zealots or discouraged prelates. The righteousness which we need, the righteousness which Jesus told His Jewish brethren to seek, this righteousness we receive as a gift (Romans 5: 17), a righteousness which redefines us as alive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5: 21), and as righteous people, we no longer need the law (2 Timothy 1: 7)