20. Love in Counseling

The Crisis in Counseling and the Basics of Nouthetic Method

Hey, we're moving along. It's been a couple weeks since we've been in this session, so we'll start right in with a little bit review, I think is helpful. Remember, we're talking about biblical or euthetic counseling, and we started off by looking at there is a crisis in counseling and what has happened to it.

The Church has abandoned its role as the primary counselor. Then we looked at the Holy Spirit in counseling. What is euthetic counseling? What is euthetic counseling? You can answer that. If I just ask right now, what is euthetic counseling?

Counseling from a personal point of view.

Yep, and what is the main emphasis that's different from all the other counseling? Well, that's true, but what does that mean? That's true, too, no arguments. But in style or technique. Go ahead.

The authority of Scripture as to how you provide the counseling as the standard?

Yeah, but style or technique, principles, what makes it unique as opposed to Rogerian, Skinnerian?

The idea of admonishment.

Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. It's confrontational, and it's a shame. You mentioned confrontation today. People think that's a negative term. It's not. It can be negative, but it's not, and that's one of the big differences.

It's also directive versus nondirective. I could even put that up there. We looked at confessional in counseling. Confession is part of it. Then we looked at solving problems euthetically, principles, including technique, communication, persons involved, then presuppositions and principles, and then language in counseling.

That was the last lesson that we had, so tonight we're going to look at love, love in counseling. All you need is love, right? Okay, love has been a consistent theme in our study thus far, and yet because it's so essential to biblical counseling, that's, in fact, we could have used that as another one of the answers to my question.

The Great Commandment and Love for God and Neighbor

All biblical counseling must be done in love, and that's why it's so essential that we're going to devote all of tonight on the topic of love, even though we've spent a lot of time already examining that topic.

The scripture says the sum total of God's requirement for the Christian is to love God and love his neighbor, and we all know that that requirement is called, of course, the great commandment, and the second one, which is like it, and I know I'm preaching to the choir here as I look out and see who's here.

However, I'm not going to just gloss over the scripture. It's always helpful to go back and review the scripture because every time you read it, it seems like you see something new anyway. Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law?

That is the question that was asked of Jesus, which prompted him to respond, and he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.

The wording of this makes it abundantly clear. This commandment takes a back seat to no one, and then, of course, the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, vertically, horizontally, if you want to look at it that way, and then he sums it up on these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.

In other words, basically, what he's saying is all of Christianity, all of our relationship with God is summed up in those two commandments, and that's basic for biblical counseling. Any man who loves in this way will not need counseling.

If you can get this one thing right, if you can learn, you know, the closer you move to loving God with all your heart, loving your neighbor as yourself, you will find that you will not need to go to counseling because the first goal is that we are self-counselors anyway.

That's what the scripture teaches us. But that's because love cements relationships both between God and man, and between man and man. So, if that is the basis for our relationships, you will find you won't come into conflict, because love is, and we'll see that, because love is other-oriented.

Love attracts, fear repels. And I know we always take love and hate as being polar opposites, but you could also do the same thing with love. Love attracts, fear repels. Quite often, fear is the opposite of love.

And love is the ultimate answer to all the problems of living with which a counselor or a pastor will deal. If you're doing any kind of counseling and you miss the concept of love, you're not getting to the root of the problem.

Why Self-Love Is Not Biblical

All right? Now, and this is a tragedy, that there are some teachers who try to insert a third command in between this first and the second commandment, to love yourself. That is just patently non-biblical.

We'll spend a little bit of time. Why is that? Why do I say that it's a tragedy? Because the Bible teaches that men already love themselves. And we see that, you know, numerous times. We'll go through a couple.

The Christian is instructed to learn how to love others with the same intense love that he already has for himself. The Bible takes it for granted. And then even the two great commandments, when you read it, and then you get over into Ephesians chapter 5, you'll see that a man must love his wife as his own flesh.

Because no one ever hated their own flesh. When somebody says, if you ever come to somebody and say, I hate myself, they're lying. Or at least, or they could possibly be self-deceived. Because no matter what they're looking for is relief from feelings of things that either have been done to them or their own shortcomings.

But they love themselves. Biblical love, which is true love, is always other-oriented. It's always active. The biblical concept is it's better to give than to receive. Some of these little short snippets are also very true.

And, you know, love never fails. You know, all of these type of little sayings are all true. And then notice the attributes of love. Now, we went through these. I think we went through them on a Sunday morning, didn't I?

Did I go through 1 Corinthians 13 on a Sunday morning as part of our First John study? It was. That was only a couple weeks ago, huh? My memory is getting worse. It could be. But anyway, I just put it in the sign of a chart, which shows.

And now notice I separated it into positive attributes, negative attributes. I don't mean that there's positive things to say about love and then negative things to say about love. It's just how it's stated in the scriptures.

Some things are stated in the affirmative. Some things are stated in the negative. So look at the positive attributes of love. It suffers long. In other words, it's patient. It's kind. It rejoices in truth.

It bears all things. That means it doesn't matter. No matter what pressure is put to it, love still prevails. Believes all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things. And lasts forever. Now, this is obviously true biblical love.

But then it states it in the negative things that it is not. It does not envy. Does not want or exalt itself. It's not puffed up. Does not behave unseemly. Does not seek its own. Is not easily provoked.

Does not think evil. And does not rejoice in sin. Just look at that. Imagine if everybody had that as a target. And this is the way I'm going to treat my wife, treat my fellow man, treat my children, treat my parents.

You can see why earlier I put in that any man who is loving biblically won't need counseling. Still continuing the principles. Paul continues in the same line as Christ when he tells us to love our wives as we love our own bodies.

The Christian is instructed to love others with the same zeal as they love themselves. And this is getting back to this. In our society today, you'll hear a lot about, you know, poor self-image and whatnot.

People who don't love themselves, we have to teach you how to love yourself. Before you can love others, you got to love yourself. It's all sheer and utter nonsense and absolutely contrary to scripture.

Scripture makes it very clear. No one ever hated his own flesh. The self-esteem movement has twisted the meaning of these passages to the detriment of people who are in distress. If you go to a counselor, if you're having difficulties in life, you know, relationship problems, and you go, there's a good possibility that they're going to diagnose you as, oh, you've got poor self-esteem.

You don't think, you don't love yourself enough. We have to teach you how to do that. To live a productive and meaningful life is not found, I should have put a little underline under that, is not found in one's own sense of worth or esteem.

In fact, I think I told this story once before, and this is, I don't remember the exact circumstances, but a group of psychologists gave a self-esteem test to the inmates at Sing Sing Prison up in Ossining, okay?

They gave exactly the same test to the graduating class at Harvard. And guess what? Guess who had the highest self-esteem? The prisoners had the highest self-esteem. Now, that's according to their criteria, too, which we probably wouldn't necessarily agree with.

But they had more self-worth than the Harvard graduating class. Your proper view of yourself is found in identifying yourself as a child of God. This is where, this is where all counseling should be directed.

If somebody says, well, I don't like myself, well, that's good. I don't like you either. No, that's, I, I, don't do that. That's, no. You say, you need to identify yourself as a child of God. The worth that you have is not coming from yourself, but the fact that love, love of God has been shed abroad on your heart.

Identity in Christ and True Worth

Yeah.

Do you know, by any chance, has some of this stuff maybe changed a little recently with so much of the identity politics taking place and how the, how basically white, white men are supposed to feel guilty for everything?

How could you possibly have self-esteem if we're being, if people are constantly being told to be shameful of everything? It just seems like contradictory world views.

Yeah, there isn't. Not, they, they talk, it's, it's psychobabble. That's what they do. They wind up talking. They can't, any, when you feel bad about yourself, it's, let me back up a minute. It's absolutely possible to feel bad about yourself, to feel bad about your circumstances, things that you're going through.

When somebody calls you a name, it makes you feel bad. But that's an emotional thing. All right. Emotions change. All right. Biblical love and your own sense of, of worth found in, when it's found in Christ and not in yourself, that doesn't change by your circumstances.

Okay. Just like biblical joy. You can be in the midst of dire circumstances and still have the joy of the Lord. Perfect example of that is Paul and Silas. They're in the Philippian jail, right? And they're in the stocks and you know, that, that was the stocks in, in those days that were, were, it was torture.

Okay. What were they doing? Singing hymns, praising God. They still had the joy of the Lord, even though they were being tortured. Okay. Because their, their sense of worth and esteem wasn't coming from their circumstances or even from their own personality, but from their identity in Christ.

Does that make sense? Okay. Only this identity assures a person that he is, and I've listed a couple of things. One, that he's regenerate. Two, he's a member of God's family. Three, that he's forgiven.

Four, that he's declared righteous. And five, he's destined for heaven. If you, if, if you are assured of those things, that's going to change your opinion of who you are, how you look at yourself and how you view yourself.

See, if a Christian understands these things, he has no identity crisis because he knows who he is in Christ and he is sealed with the Holy Spirit. So it's not a question of, that's, that's why we constantly look at looking forward as to who we are in Christ, not who I was prior.

Okay. I mean, sometimes it's okay to, to, to take a look back and say, wow, look what God saved me from. But it's better to say, look, look what he has saved me too. Who am I now? The fact is, a person apart from Christ is totally unworthy.

And that's a good thing for two reasons. Sometimes, I mean, you guys know me, you know, my sense of humor, you know, about once in, once in a great while, I might say something sarcastic. And somebody, I've had somebody come in and sit down.

If you do this, you have to make sure that you know the person. But somebody came in and sat down, you know, pastor, I just feel so unworthy. That's good because you are. And sometimes I say it just that way because it's, it snaps the person back to reality.

You are unworthy. Any worthiness you have is found in Christ, not in who you are. And so if somebody says that they are, they are, they feel unworthy, that's a good thing. And here's why. One, because it stresses the worthlessness that can lead to repentance.

If you recognize your situation apart from Christ, you want to change it. You don't want to be worthless. Okay. And in fact, I figured which, which song, Fanny Crosby song, Such a Worm is I. Do you know that in most modern hymn books, they change that?

Such a soul am I or something like that. Now, Trinity hymnal that we use, it, they keep the words that such a worm is I, am I. All right. But it stresses the worthlessness that can lead to repentance.

And it makes the person totally dependent upon God. Remember, when you're, when you're giving the gospel to somebody, you have to give them the bad news before you give them the good news. You don't walk in and say, by the way, Jesus saves.

Saves from what? All right. I love the analogy of Francis Schaeffer. He says somebody, an unregenerate person is sitting in their nice, warm, toasty house. Then when you come and you give them the gospel, you blow the roof off.

Now they're exposed to the, to the elements. He says they, they wanted their nice, warm, cozy house back. How did they get that? Only through Christ. Can't put the roof back on. So truth, self-worth or self-esteem is not a goal or an end, but a byproduct of seeking the, seeking first the kingdom of God.

And I actually should have put quotations about, about self-worth and self-esteem, because it's not really that. It's, it's Christ-esteem. Many so-called Christian counselors are doing damage because they fail to teach the proper view of self-love versus unworthiness.

And this is, and this is true even today. You know, you, you still find a lot of counselors that, that reject the, the biblical or the euthetic counseling method. It's hard to find a good biblical counselor, even within the evangelical church.

Self-love does not lead a person to repentance nor to behavior change, which obviously we're looking for both. Self-love is seeking a change in feelings, not behavior. And that is the goal of all secular counseling, is we, we want you, we want you to feel better.

All right? Want you to feel good. Want you to feel good about yourself. Repentance, on the other hand, always leads to behavior change. Now, it's more than behavior change, but it leads to behavior change.

And the Bible teaches obedience, obedience to God, regardless of one's self-image. Doesn't matter how you see yourself. Doesn't matter what, what, doesn't matter of the opinion you may have of what you are doing or where you're at at the present time.

You still call to obedience. And righteous behavior is the source from which one can derive a satisfying self-concept. Through repentance and biblical confrontation, and when true behavior, behavior change from the inside out, you will start having a better concept of yourself.

Not self-love, but an understanding of who I am and accepting the fact that you, you now carry worth because of who you are in Christ. And that's always the difference. The obedient Christian has a clear conscience based upon righteous living, which will lead to a sense of satisfaction.

Not complacency, but a sense of satisfaction. So the Apostle Paul could stand before the church with a clear conscience because he always treated them properly with the right motives. And I think especially of that when he was talking to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus.

He talked about how for three years, night and day, he admonished them with tears. And he had a clear conscience. And this is what we need as well. Just as with most other elements of life, there's a sharp contrast between biblical love and pagan love.

Biblical Love Versus Pagan Love

Righteous behavior is a source from which one can derive a satisfying self-concept. The pagan view of love is that love just happens. And we even fall victim to using this terminology. I fell in love like it just happened.

No, it didn't. It started up in your head long before you ever just, quote, fell in love. But that's a whole other different story. Biblical love as opposed to pagan love is giving of oneself to another.

It's something one does for another person and begins with an attitude that issues forth in something that actually tangibly happens. You can see it's quite a bit of difference between pagan love and biblical love.

And love is commanded by God and must be worked at. That's a big difference. If love is just a feeling, you can't work at it. You can't command your feelings and your emotions. Those are responses based upon things that have been done to you or for you.

True love is always under control while feelings are variable. One of my favorite expressions is, you know, I love you more today than yesterday because yesterday you really ticked me off. When you invest yourself in another person, you begin to feel differently toward him.

Those love feelings can come. In the home, responsibility for love falls principally on the father and the husband. He is the primary lover in the home, and he sets the tone for everything. That's a whole session, right, involved in that statement right there.

The husband must love his wife as Christ loves the church. Now the wife is to submit to her husband, but that also is an act of love. And that's something, if you're ever counseling in a marriage situation, and a lot of women in the church, even today, still resist the idea of what is biblical submission.

It's an act of love. Notice the big difference between biblical love and feeling-oriented love. Feeling-oriented is changeable, it's impulsive, it has its highs and its lows, but biblical love is always looking at the other person, even when that other person is misbehaving.

And that's why, the reason for that is because biblical love can be commanded, taught, and learned, because it's concrete, not abstract. Biblical love is not of some abstraction. You talk about romantic love, and it is so abstract, you know, different poets, different writers, different authors, different philosophers will all have different ideas of what true love is.

Therefore, the importance of a biblical view of love cannot be overemphasized, especially in the counseling process. If a Christian says he does not love his wife, the problem is not with his feelings or emotions, it's a matter of the will.

And I've actually said that to people, they say, I don't love my wife anymore. Well, you better. You're commanded to. So start. Sounds harsh, but remember, because love is not feelings, not just feelings and emotions, it's action, it's tangible, it's concrete.

He can and must learn to love his wife, to be obedient to God. To not love your wife is to be disobedient to God. Notice again, here we have hope. That's why I put those little dots after it. If the Bible is followed and put at the center of the counseling process, if the Bible is followed and put at the center of the counseling process, there is hope.

Biblical Counseling Requires Confrontation, Not Passive Support

If not, your guess is as good as mine. Next topic is support, sympathy, and empathy in counseling. How do these concepts play out in counseling? Because you hear so much about that, especially in secular counseling, you need to show support, you need to show sympathy, you need to be empathetic.

Modern non-biblical counseling defines support as a passive, non-active presence of a counselor who, by his presence, accepts and shows empathy. I'm not going to do it. I was going to give it to Raspberry.

The first response to that definition is that passive support is a non-biblical concept. It's non-biblical. The Christian counselor must never support sinful behavior. If somebody comes in and they're confessing sin, the last thing you want to do is put your arm around and say, well, I'm here to support you.

No, we're not here to support sin. The second response is that support is not enough, even if you do give it. If a person has failed to handle the problem God's way, he needs biblical confrontation. This is where it really comes in.

A person who is not following the word of God needs to be confronted in what he is doing, in his sin, and then shown the right way to respond. So the counselor should point out biblical principles and seek to bring the person to repentance, faith, and hope.

Because biblical confrontation aims at the truth, repentance, and the subsequent change in behavior. Notice, the aim is at truth and repentance, which leads to change in behavior. You don't want to just change behavior.

Why don't you want to just change behavior? Yeah. Yes. Yes. And, and if you, and if you want to just change behavior, then you're following in the footsteps of Carl Rogers. You don't want to just change behavior.

We want to change, a change in personality. Remember, being born again is a change in personality. It's changing who you are. You are a different person. You are a new creation in Christ. So it's not merely changing behavior.

It's changing your, your personality's change. And the new personality then starts putting off the old and putting on the new. All right. But, but unless there's a change in, in, in heart, changing behavior is not going to, firstly, it's not going to last.

And because there's just no, no real, not only is there no drive to do it, but there's no ability to do it. Remember, the heart, the heart of flesh doesn't seek to please God. It can't even do so. The counselor must at all costs avoid every suggestion that he is lending support to ways of handling life that do not originate in God's word.

This was, this is more towards somebody who is going to be a counselor, you know, maybe in a more formal setting, but it also, in, in how you counsel friends and family, you have to stick with the biblical mandates and, and not the procedures and methodology of the world.

Support is harmful first and foremost because it's non-biblical. And secondly, because it communicates that there is no answer to the problem and the counselor will simply be there to love the person and suffer through the problem with them.

If a person's in sin, there's a difference there. You know, if you're just sympathizing with somebody, if somebody's going through a loss of a loved one or something, go there, sit there, put your arm around them.

You don't necessarily even have to wax eloquent. But if somebody is, has a problem in their lifestyle, a sinful issue, then you have to communicate and confront the person, not just give support. To a biblical counselor, that attitude is unacceptable.

Why? Because he believes the promises of God. See, that's the hope that we have. Backing up the biblical methodology, you have all the promises of scripture. According to 1 Corinthians 10, 13, there is no problem, no matter how large or small, that God does not provide an answer for.

So according to 1 Corinthians 10, 13, then, if a Christian is not handling difficulties as God requires, the blame rests solely with him. And that's something you need to communicate as well. Because sometimes a person will come to see you because they have responded poorly to a certain situation.

And what you have to do is say, they may even have had evil done to them, but if they responded non-biblically, you have to deal with that. Follow what I mean? And you can't be afraid to do so either.

Because you can't change what somebody does to them, but they can change how they respond to that. Support, as defined by modern psychology, is unbiblical and denies the power of God and the promises of God.

Empathy is not deep support. You cannot begin to empathize until you come to grips with the other person's problems. You have to really get to the root of the problems and understand it before you can enter into their situation and give them biblical advice.

You can best show empathy by encouraging them biblically and pitching in alongside them to solve the problem according to scripture. Remember that this is one of the big differences between secular counseling and biblical counseling.

The biblical counselor does get personally involved with the individual by demonstrating biblical love to them and putting, and actually being able to think along the same lines that they're thinking and correct their sinful behavior.

It is when you do something concrete that the person will know that you care. Counseling, like love, must be active, not passive. And this is the textbook right here, this verse of scripture, James 2, 15 and 16.

If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed, be filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for the body, what use is that?

James says faith without works is dead. Support, as defined by non-biblical counselors today, is dead. We need look no further than the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. The traveler was in real physical need.

The priest was indifferent of Levite curious. The Samaritan responded by not only feeling compassion and empathy, he demonstrated it by doing something tangible to rectify the situation. And he proved himself to be a good neighbor by showing love.

So biblical love is always active. Biblical love produces change. And sometimes questions. Any questions? We good? Okay.

You have been listening to the Reformed Rookie Podcast, where we aim to teach Reformed Theology to beginners or rookies. Be sure to look us up on the web at www .reformedrookie .com, where you will find many more learning tools and aids to help you grow in your understanding of all things Reformed.

And remember, Semper Reformanda!

Luther Before the Diet of Worms and Conscience Captive to the Word of God

Martin Luther, are you prepared to retract these writings?

In Psalm I discuss faith and good works. If I were to retract these, I should be denying accepted Christian truths.

Martin Luther, you have not yet answered the question. Will you recant? Or will you not?

Here it is. I am bound to my beliefs by the texts of the Bible. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God.

Help me. Amen.