1. Introduction to Biblical Counseling

The Biblical Basis and Purpose of Christian Counseling

Okay, so we're starting a new series. The title is Biblical Counseling, and tonight will be an introduction. And just a couple of words of preface before we get to the introduction even. You might say, well, why are we teaching biblical counseling?

The answer to that is that everybody, if you're a Christian, you are a counselor, because people are going to be asking you, you're going to be offering the words of truth, you're going to be presenting the gospel, both for salvation, but because as people see Christ in you and see how you handle life's problems, you're going to be like a magnet, and people are going to come and they're going to ask you questions, and they're going to ask you, how do you handle it when this happens, etc.

So in that sense, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you will be put in a counseling situation. The only question is, are you going to counsel biblically? And if you're going to counsel biblically, you have to know what the word of God says, and then how to apply it.

So this is going to be a very practical, hands-on study, so to speak. So this is lesson one, this is the introduction, and I'm starting very basic with laying the foundation for counseling, and three main questions in life are three questions that everybody wants to know the answers to.

Now, there are many questions that people will ask, or people want to know, but you can kind of boil them all down, they'll fit into one of these three categories. So I'm going to start with that. First question is, who am I?

Everybody wants to know who you are, you know, who am I? Second question is, why am I here? And the third question is, where am I going? And if you just pause and think about that for a minute, you can see how that everybody wants to know answers to those questions.

So how do we come up with true answers? There's a lot of different answers to those questions, and this is relevant to counseling, because if you don't understand the answers to these questions, how are you going to counsel somebody when they run into problems in life?

Secular and Biblical Answers to Identity, Purpose, and Destiny

So, the secular answers, and these are, again, broad categories, I'm only broken down into two, secular and biblical. Secular answers, who am I? I am the product of random chance. You know that this is what is taught, especially in the science classes with this theory of evolution.

We were all here just because some primordial slime decided to, didn't want to be swimmer anymore, and decided to come onto land, and lo and behold, here we are, just the product of random chance. Why am I here?

To be happy. Isn't that the goal of everybody? Isn't that part of the American dream? We want to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if you talk to any secular psychiatrist, psychologist, that's one of the goals that they have.

They want their clients to be happy, so whatever it takes to make them happy. Where am I going? Nowhere. I had a detective that worked for me for many years, good friend, good detective, good guy, somebody that I admired very much, and he would look at me whenever I brought the gospel up, and he'd kind of clench his teeth and he'd say, Jensen, when you close your eyes, that's it.

It's all over. Had no hope whatsoever. So, those are the secular answers. The biblical answers, who am I? I am the image bearer of God. You have to start with that as the basis for any answer. Now, again, the answer to this question is much more complex than simply that, but that's the basis for who we are, and how you counsel and how you live your life is going to be based upon who do you think you are.

Why am I here? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever, and again, that's fundamental. It's the basics, but it goes much deeper than that, obviously, but it begins there, and then where am I going? There's only two choices.

You're going to heaven or hell, and of course, that factors into how we counsel people as well. People need to understand, and so that they don't delude themselves, all right? So, we see, the difference.

You can start to see already what the answers to those three questions are if you're a secularist as opposed to being a biblicist, and how does somebody handle life's problems? It's going to be depending on what view they have of those questions.

Whenever I teach a class, whether it was when I was teaching in a Christian school, even if it was geometry, I taught Bible, I taught logic, I taught many different things, and then I've taught many classes in the context of the church as well, I always give course objectives because it helps keep me focused.

What is the purpose? What do we hope to accomplish in our time together? And so, I'm going to take some time to go through what the course objectives are, and again, the idea here is I'm not going to explain what the purpose is.

Course Objectives for Biblical Counseling

All the objectives right now, I just want to put the objectives out there to begin with. So, the first objective is to define the biblical basis for Christian counseling. The word Christian counseling is almost meaningless in our society today, even within the evangelical church.

I'll give you an example. I had a number, this is a number of years ago now, probably 10, 15 years ago. I had somebody referred to me, a woman came to me for counseling on a certain issue, and she told me that she had been going to a large evangelical church on the south shore of Long Island, and they had a Christian counseling center.

And she didn't seem to be improving, they weren't addressing her problem, so she was referred to me for counseling. And so, I needed to ask her some questions as to what she had experienced already. So, I said, among the questions that I asked her about the counseling that she had received was, I said, how often did you pray during the counseling sessions?

She said, oh, we never prayed. I said, do you open with prayer? No. Close with prayer? No. Did you pray over specific issues that you were dealing with? No, no, we never prayed. I said, okay, what portions of scripture did the counselor show you to help you deal with your problems?

She said, oh, we never used the Bible. I said, well, then you did not have Christian counseling. How can you have Christian counseling when the two major weapons in our arsenal are left in the quiver?

So, one of the things I want to do in this session is to define the biblical basis for Christian counseling. Second one is to explain the basic areas of secular psychiatric techniques. I think that's kind of self-explanatory.

I guess my bias shows through in just the way I put the question or the objective. There are basic areas in secular psychiatric techniques, and we will explore some of those as we go through the course.

Third objective is to contrast a medical model of, and I have in parentheses, mental illness with the moral model of responsibility. You're already getting an idea that there's two divergent paths to go when it comes to counseling.

I put mental illness in quotations because a lot of what is called mental illness today is not mental illness. There is certainly such a thing as mental illness. There are people who have organic issues.

There are real reasons why, brain injuries, birth defects. There are many things that will cause mental illness. But there are many things that are being described as mental illness when they are not, and they are simply spiritual, emotional issues that can be dealt with through biblical counseling.

So, we're going to actually spend some time contrasting the difference between the medical model, and just by the name of that, you can see why we have a problem with it. If somebody has behavioral issues and you recategorize them, well, it's a disease.

How do you treat a disease as opposed to treating behavioral issues? There's a difference. Fourth, to demonstrate the importance of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in counseling. This is very timely since the sermon this coming Sunday is going to be on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

It's a coincidence that that comes up, and we're starting this, and we're talking about the importance of the Holy Spirit in counseling. In fact, very often when I counsel with somebody, especially in marriage counseling, etc., I sit them down and I say, if you've come to me because you think I have a certain expertise, and you're expecting me to solve your problems, you're really going to be disappointed, because there's really only one counselor in the room, and that's the Holy Spirit.

It's my job as a pastor, as a human counselor, to point you to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That's how we get any true change. Fifth, to show the importance of the Word of God in Christian counseling.

You cannot counsel apart from the Word of God. If you try, it's just a fool's errand. Again, that one's pretty obvious. Show the importance of prayer in counseling. Again, I'm not going to comment too much on that.

We'll be spending quite a bit of time talking about prayer, the Word of God, and especially how the two of those are joined together with the ministry of the Holy Spirit in counseling. Seven, to show the relationship between biblical sanctification and counseling.

If you understand that now, we've also spent some time in our study in 1 John on the topic of sanctification, which again is very, very important. You have to look at the problems that people have, and the reasons we suffer, and the relationship to that is with spiritual maturity.

The goal of every Christian is to become spiritually mature. We've seen that in Scripture numerous times. Practically in all the epistles, we see that we are to grow to the mature man. As the Apostle Paul said, when I was a child, I spoke as a child, but I put away childish things.

Now he has to act like a man. We need to act as mature believers if we're going to, even to be free from spiritual issues in our own lives, let alone help somebody else. Number eight, to explain euthetic confrontation in counseling.

Let me just ask a question. How many people here have heard the word euthetic before? How many people have not? Okay, fair enough. Euthetic is a transliterated word from the Greek. The Greek word is eutheteo.

It strictly means to admonish, or to confront, or to reprove. One of the hallmarks of biblical counseling is that it is euthetic. You'll see that as we go through the lessons, how the Apostle Paul talks about admonishing one another.

That's the Greek word, eutheteo. That's one of the hallmarks of euthetic counseling. You'll see the difference between that and many of the other schools of thought in psychoanalysis and psychology, where they never confront.

They never get argumentative. They never get argumentative. In fact, truth is almost irrelevant. It's all based on feelings. How do you feel about that? One of the things that you'll very seldom, there are certain occasions, but one of the things you'll very seldom hear a biblical counselor say is, why do you think you did that?

Now, who would like to offer a reason? Why do you suppose that biblical counselors don't say that? Not you. Come on. Why do you think you only hear a biblical counselor say, why do you think you did that?

Go ahead.

Negative things in their lives. There may have been reasons, but why?

That's true. That was a great euthetic answer. I'm looking for something just a little more good, because we already know why. It's called total depravity. We're all sinners. We don't have to ask, why do you think you held up that bank?

It wasn't for the money. Yes, it was for the money, but the main reason is total depravity. Number nine is to show how all mature Christians are uniquely qualified to counsel. Notice there's a word in there that's extremely important, and that is mature.

One of the things that I tell people who come to me for counseling, and they say, well, you know, I've talked to a lot of my friends. Oh, no. That's a terrible thing. It's great if your friends are mature believers.

We're sure you're going to get a biblical answer, but apart from that, all you're going to get is opinions. In fact, one of the hallmarks of euthetic counseling is the counselor doesn't really offer opinions as to what the course of action should be.

You bring the person to the Word of God and have them work their way through it with your guidance and show them this is what the Word of God says. To show that all mature Christians are uniquely qualified to counsel, to show the balance of love and authority in counseling.

This is something that we see throughout the scriptures, two concepts that are absolutely and indispensably linked together, and that is love and authority or love and truth. Paul says you are to admonish one another in love, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, let not kindness and truth depart from your lips.

We do need to confront, but too often those of us who are reformed, we all go through that cage stage and we want to beat everybody over the head with the Word of God until they receive the truth. That's not the way to do it, and we know that, but most of us have gone through that cage stage.

Now, we are to present the gospel in love. We're supposed to confront in sin in love, and there's a balance between that. To show the importance of confession and forgiveness in Christian counseling. I can't tell you, I can't emphasize strongly enough the importance of this.

Confession of sin and then the granting of forgiveness are at the root of most problems where people are bitter, people are angry. One of the things that we'll see as well throughout the course is that spiritual issues can manifest themselves in physical ailments.

That's a biblical principle. And so, confession and forgiveness, obviously that's part of your salvation. You can't come into the kingdom unless you confess your sin and are forgiven, and then we are told to forgive in kind.

So that's a very big part of biblical counseling. To demonstrate the need for communication in problem solving. It's kind of an obvious one, but it needs to be said. One of the biggest issues in marriage counseling or wherever there is discord is a lack of communication.

And remember, and we'll get into this in some depth, three things are needed for communication to take place. First, let me ask the question, what is communication? What is communication? All right, he's been in this class.

The transfer of information. You can have two people talking at each other, and if there's no information being transferred, there's no communication. Three things are necessary for communication. You need a transmitter or receiver and a language common to both.

And so, if you're talking over each other and trying to talk through each other, it doesn't do it. You have to talk to each other, and part of communication is listening. So it's not just talking, but it's listening.

You need a transmitter and a receiver. And we need to listen more. Who was it? Some old preacher said, you have one mouth and two ears. You should be listening twice as much as you talk. To show the importance of homework in Christian counseling.

The majority of the work of sanctification is done outside of the counseling room. Counseling room is just to set the stage, to lay out the plan of action, to correct sinful behavior and thoughts and attitudes.

But the biggest amount of work is done outside. So that homework can be all different things. Sometimes it's written homework. Sometimes it's things that you must do. For example, if somebody's been holding forgiveness, you know, they have bitterness in their heart, part of their homework might be, all right, you're going to go see Sally Joe and you're going to ask her for forgiveness for what you've done, etc., etc.

It could be anything. But homework is very important. To demonstrate in practical ways how to counsel biblically. We'll actually get down to the nitty gritty and talk about how to counsel biblically in very practical ways.

What you're going to find is it's very, very much common sense. And the basis for it, though, of how we're going to do it, is you have to know the Word of God. The same things that cause us to become mature are the same things that will help us to be better counselors.

And that is reading the Word, praying, developing a prayer life for yourself, loving the brethren. Biblical counseling is an outgrowth of loving the brethren. And we've seen in 1 John. I was amazed. I've taught this course three, four, five times maybe now.

I've adjusted it a little bit. But I have been stunned at how much of this has to do with our studies in 1 John. It's just amazing for that. Now we're coming up. There are other things that I could put forth today, but I think that for an introduction that would be fine.

And we'll pick this up next week. But are there any questions so far on biblical counseling, what it is, what it isn't, what you've heard about it? It's not just say no to sin. Yes, go ahead, Ashley. There are biblical counselors who set up a practice primarily and they charge, they have a fee.

My preferred method is that it's done under the auspices of the local church. And like we offer, the elders here don't charge anything for counseling. We're paid by the church that's part of our, it's a ministry of grace.

But I wouldn't say that it's wrong for somebody, because I do know biblical counselors that do that, that is their occupation, that is their living. The only problem that I have with outside counselors is they need to be tied into the authority of a church because that's a big part of maturity and holding people accountable.

For, besides being a pastor here and doing my own counseling, for about 20 years, I was a board member of a biblical counseling ministry. And my brother-in-law was the primary counselor of that. And the way we had set that up was he counseled under the eldership of four or five different churches.

He just happened to be very proficient. He had all the college requirements for it. He was certified counselor. And so he would circulate to different churches and counsel under the authority of that eldership.

And then the churches would give him like a retainer for doing that. But the individual who really needed help didn't have to worry about coming up with money out of their pocket. Excellent.

Counseling for Depression, OCD, and the Limits of Labels

Question. Yes? Is Christian counseling for like all different types of mental illnesses,.

Or is it more for like... Yeah. One of the things that a good biblical counselor will do is when somebody... Let's just use an example of depression. Somebody comes to me and they're saying they're suffering from depression.

First thing I want them to do is to go and get a full medical evaluation because there are medical issues that can cause depression. You don't want to go looking for sin if somebody's got an underactive thyroid, say.

So you want to make sure that they're... Physically that there's nothing. And also anything organic that would cause it. But other than that, then you would have to... Most other problems, there's a connection between the emotions and their relationship with God.

And that's something that you have to look for as you do it, as you continue in counseling.

For OCDs, is it around the different things like that?

Well, firstly, I don't accept all those labels because the labels are based upon certain behavior. And the causes for that certain behavior may not be the same. So that's why we're always going to find out what is the root cause of the behavior.

Is there something there or is it something organic? I'll give you an example. Anybody familiar with what's called a DSM? When I was young, the DSM was this thick. You know how thick it is now? It's about that thick.

They keep adding to it. But then they also keep detracting from it. For example, in the 1950s, guess what was considered a mental illness according to the psychiatric community? Homosexuality. It's not in the DSM anymore.

They took it out. They said, no, that's no longer a mental illness. So that's why I don't accept certain labels because they're arbitrary. What I look for and what the biblical counselor looks for is evaluate the behavior.

What is the cause of it? Are they violating the scripture and deal with it according to biblical principles? Now, can there be such a thing as mental illness that are beyond biblical counseling? Yeah, that is possible.

Does that answer your question?

Scripture, Christ's Lordship, and the Need for Prayerful, Church-Based Counsel

I was going to say, I think it's remarkable. I'm not surprised, but how many churches, like that instance you shared, where they didn't even pray or they didn't share the scriptures or anything. And it just goes to show how, like the scriptures say, everything needed for life and godliness is found in the word of God and how you can't divorce anything from Christ's Lordship and he's Lord over counseling, he's Lord over everything.

And so, I just think it's crazy. Even inside of a church, you know?

Yeah. And again, the whole idea of this, everybody today, everybody has to have a label. And it's not just because you put a label on it doesn't mean that that is the same root cause. We're all different, we're all unique, and we have to evaluate the situation based on the person's unique situation.

Any other final thoughts? No? Okay. Let's pray.