Jesus' salvation is not God's AA for sinning

[Ghada]

In AA, people endeavor to stop drinking with support groups and programs to help keep their sobriety. Drinking becomes an ongoing daily struggle. The main goal is to not stop trying to not drink and stop attending meetings. At those meetings, every member must reconfirm openly that they are an alcoholic. It is a necessary reconfirmation of their need to struggle against drinking. No member ever says they were an alcoholic. Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic is their motto. Many of course suffer times of depression, and that is when they must be most sure to come to the AA meetings.

Some Christians preach the gospel of Jesus Christ as God's AA program for sinning. Let's look at the exact similarities with their churches and AA meetings:

They must always say they are sinners. They can never say they were sinners, which is self deception. They teach once a sinner always a sinner, by sin nature. Not sinning is a daily ongoing struggle, that is never completely won. Their goal is to not stop struggling with sin. Their churches minister to help sinners to sin less and make their lives better. At times of falling to sinning, they need church attendance most.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is of course neither. When we repent of sinning from the heart, Jesus wipes away the old life and gives us a new heart of God, not of sinners. We no longer need call ourselves sinners, because now we are not sinning against Jesus. We don't have an ongoing daily struggle with sinning, but rather a sure faith in Jesus, that we will overcome temptation. We are not sinners struggling with daily sin, with times of depressing failure. We are saints in Christ Jesus overcoming all temptation like Jesus, with a free and glad heart of His Spirit.

 

[Ghada]

There is one main difference between the sinners' gospel program and AA. In AA, the stated goal is to remain drink free. They do believe it is a real possibility to be drink-free for life. They applaud and are inspired by such long-time success stories.

The sinners' Christian AA program however are not so. They declare it impossible to be sin-free, and in fact are hostile toward the very idea of it. They condemn any such story as a lie. Their stated goal is only to sin less, but never sin-free. It's a kind of resentment of success in others, as well as a perceived threat to overturn their whole church program.

It was the same with the Jews religion in the days of Jesus and His apostles:

And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;