Bill W., Dr. Bob, and the Apostle Paul
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
“A thorough sense of sin is one of the earliest works of grace in the heart.” – C.H. Spurgeon
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on June 10, 1935, by Bill Wilson (known anonymously as Bill W.) and Bob Smith (known anonymously as Dr. Bob). Both longtime alcoholics, they met through AA’s immediate predecessor, the Christian revivalist Oxford Group, which was based on the “Four Absolutes” of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love.
In 1939, Bill W. and Dr. Bob published Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. Nicknamed “The Big Book” because of its voluminous size, the manual’s most cited sections are the Twelve Steps at the beginning of Chapter 5 and the Twelve Traditions, which are found in the Appendix.
Over the past 85 years, The Big Book has sold more than 30 million copies and was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 best and most influential books published in English since 1923. In 2012, The Big Book was also designated by the Library of Congress as one of the 88 “Books That Shaped America.”
Step #1 in the AA program reads as follows: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.” Step #2 says: “[We] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” In other words, admit that you have a problem and acknowledge that God has – and is – the answer.
That is pretty much what the Apostle Paul did in Romans 7:19-25…
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh; for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I do not want to do. And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So this is the principle I have discovered: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law. But I see another law at work in my body, warring against the law of my mind and holding me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (BSB)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
