One of the questions we've considered long and hard as a ministry is whether or not to encourage members to follow a 12 step program. After much prayerful consideration of the Bible and Christian resources which promote the 12 steps, we have decided not to encourage members to follow such a program for two reasons.

First, people easily transform this series of Biblical principles into a new law. Because of the progressive nature of the steps, people often measure their advancement in dealing with sin according to the step they have reached. For the Christian, this is absurd. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace came to us not through a series of steps, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

As we encounter people who have abused the 12 steps as a new law, we find them either living in pride over their accomplishments or living in the same frustration that Paul describes in Romans 7. The latter find that, like the law, the 12 steps are good (Romans 7:12). The 12 steps allow them to recognize their sin (Romans 7:7). The 12 steps also are powerless to bring life and freedom from sin, for "the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin" (Romans 7:9-11, 14). Instead, they find freedom not in a process like the 12 steps, but in the person of Jesus Christ: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:2-4).

Second, the 12 steps are self-focused. The grammatical subject of each step is an understood "we," for example, "we" made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Overcoming sin is not about what "we" do, it is about what Christ has done on the cross and what He does in us now. Even the decision of step 3, a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, can only be done by the power of the Holy Spirit: "For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance... and ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost" (1 Thessalonians 1:5, 6). We overcome sin not because we have exercised God's plan or prepared ourselves for Him (self-focused), but because Jesus Christ overcame sin for us, creates us anew and calls us to follow Him.