Competent Counsellors - Dr. Tom Ascol

Well, it's an honor to be here with you. Our church sends greetings from Cape Coral, Florida, and they've prayed and will pray for us while we meet together this morning.

And the conference was just wonderful. Thank you for all the hard work on that, and I just appreciate your pastor so much.

It's been a joy to get to know Quatro over the last, I don't know, three years, maybe four years or something. I can't really remember how we met.

But he's one of those guys who wears well. By that,

I mean the more you know him, the more you like him. Some people are better to know at a distance, you know. It's just good because when you get to know them closely, then you kind of wish you hadn't known them closely because they were better at a distance.

That's not true with your pastor. And I've kept up a little bit through him, what's going on in your church, and I couldn't be more encouraged and thankful for the work of the gospel here in this town through this ministry and have prayed for you, prayed for him along the last year or so especially, and look forward to seeing how

God will continue to bless this ministry. God is faithful to his word. As we read this morning from Isaiah 55, he never, ever will allow his word to go out and come back to him without first accomplishing his purpose.

And so there's a purpose for his word going out here in Perryville. God has plans and purposes here.

I'm often reminded back in Cape Coral through discouraging days, especially over those last many years there,

I'm wondering, you know, what am I doing here and is there something different I should be doing and what hope do we have?

In Acts chapter 18, when Paul was at Corinth and he became very discouraged, there's a lot of opposition and people making fun of him and the town he'd been to just before and Athens and so he's discouraged and the

Lord Jesus appears to him at night in a vision and he says, Paul, don't be discouraged.

Don't quit. Keep preaching for I'm with you. And then he says, for I have many people in this city and I don't expect to have a vision like that.

And I would expect your pastor, anybody to have a vision like that today, but we can learn from that vision that God gave to Paul that God had sent the ministry of the word to Corinth, which is a wonderful indication that he's got people there that he's going to save.

The many people that Jesus told Paul belonged to Jesus in Corinth were not people that had already been converted.

They were people who were going to be converted. And where the gospel goes, we should be full of hope that God intends for people in that area to be converted.

Why else would he send the gospel? The gospel goes to save people. So be encouraged and I look forward to hearing more of how the word of God runs through this part of central

Arkansas from this congregation to bring many disciples to the Lord Jesus.

Well, that wasn't my sermon. That was just kind of free. So that's extra today. The last several years, the last three or four years at Grace, I have been preaching through the letter of the

Apostle Paul to the church at Rome. And it's been a wonderful study for me personally. The book of Romans was kind of like a

Mount Everest for me. I'd look at it and admire it. I was always afraid to try to climb it and wasn't sure that, you know, there's anything

I could say that hadn't already been said about it. And that's certainly true. But it has been a marvelous study for me because Romans is the closest thing we have to a systematic theology in the

Bible. It's not a systematic theology, but Paul writes it very systematically. Some of the letters that he wrote, he wrote from prison.

Sometimes he wrote when he was on the way and he had to just fire off letters, but he had some months to kind of meditate on what he wanted to say to the church at Rome.

And so what we have here is a very studied letter from the Apostle, which is intent on communicating the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel that God has revealed that saves sinners.

It's a gospel that is by grace from the beginning to the ending. It's a gospel that is received only through faith, faith plus nothing.

It's a gospel that is centered in Jesus Christ and only Christ. And it's a gospel that when we understand it, believe it and then proclaim it, it brings glory to God.

Nobody else gets glory when the gospel is proclaimed and people are savingly united to God through it because it is an all

God gospel. And you see this from the very beginning of Romans and Romans one, verses 16 and 17.

Paul announces the theme of the letter. He tells the church what he's about to elaborate. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes for the

Jew first and also for the Greek, the Gentiles, non -Jews. And then he says, because in it is revealed the righteousness of God, righteousness that is from faith to faith, in other words, righteousness that you don't get by doing anything.

You can't earn it. The righteousness that comes to us in the gospel is righteousness that we receive only by trusting

Jesus Christ. And so the book of Romans is all about the gospel. And you see how

Paul teaches the gospel and it's instructive for us and it's instructive for me as a pastor to see after Paul announces the theme in Romans one, 16 and 17, what does he do?

He immediately starts teaching about sin. He immediately starts making the case that this whole world is under sin and that every person is afflicted by sin.

And every person, because they're made in God's image, knows God, has a knowledge of God, not a saving knowledge, but knows that there is a

God. That's an interesting thought, isn't it? Sometimes I'll have atheists say to me, you know,

I don't believe in your God. And I say, that's all right. My God doesn't believe in you. In that sense, you know something about God, but you repress that truth and unrighteousness.

You don't want there to be a God. You don't want to know the truth about the God that in your heart of hearts you have some awareness of because he made you in his image and he put eternity in your hearts.

But that sin that afflicts the whole human race, it's universal and it leaves us incapacitated.

So for three chapters, Paul elaborates the doctrine of sin. And then in the middle or toward the end of chapter three, he starts setting forth the antidote for sin, what

God has done for sinners and sending his son, the Lord Jesus, so that sinners can be made right with God through what

Jesus has done. And from the middle of chapter three or the end of that chapter, all the way through the end of chapter five, he teaches what is the heart of the gospel message.

The fact that we are justified before God by Jesus Christ alone when we receive him through faith.

It's justification by grace through faith in Christ. And those are glorious chapters that set forth how

God does that and the great exchange that takes place when a sinner like you or me confesses sin and looks to Jesus.

Our sin is credited to his life and death so that he's born it away from us and his life and death, the righteousness he earned, the atonement that he paid on the cross gets credited to us.

And that transaction takes place through faith. And then chapter six, Paul talks about the union that we have with Christ through faith.

So it's not just some kind of formalistic declaration of righteousness.

You know, it's not just something that's out there. It's also something that's in here. When you come to know

God, God changes your nature because that faith that credits righteousness to you also makes you one with Christ.

You're joined to Christ. You're in union with Christ. And Paul elaborates that in chapter six and chapter seven.

He answers the question, well, what about the law then? If the law can't justify us and the law can only condemn us, then what should we think about the law?

Well, he says the law has a role in the life of a Christian. It's just not a ladder that we try to climb up to heaven by because you'll never do that.

You can't do it because of sin. But the law is like railroad tracks for us. And it tells us how we're to live as people that have been united to Christ, who have been justified in God's courtroom.

And so we look to the law not to make us right with God, but because we've been made right with God, we want to do what pleases

God. And God says, well, here's what pleases me. Do my will. My will is summarized in my law.

In chapter eight, he talks about the spirit and how we are to live by the spirit and through the power of the spirit, we're to put sin to death that remains within us and that internal warfare as we look forward to the day when we will be completely delivered from sin.

And then chapters nine, 10 and 11, Paul elaborates the sovereignty of God in all of this and how

God from before the foundation of the world was planning this and he's accomplishing this precisely the way that he planned and that there's a role for Jews that will still be fulfilled in that eternal plan and purpose of God.

He had that old covenant nation of Israel for a while to bring about his saving revelation in Christ.

But Jewish people still have hope because they like Gentiles can be right with God by looking to Christ the

Messiah. And he says that's going to happen. I look forward to a great revival among Jewish people as God's spirit comes and brings to completion those plans and purposes.

And then after those 11 chapters of just wonderful teaching, doctrine, the gospel explained,

Paul ends chapter 11 with a doxology. It just all theology rightly understood leads to doxology.

It leads to worship and Paul does that. And then in chapter 12, he starts making application and he tells us how

God's ways are to be lived according to God's commandments in the power of God's gospel.

He elaborates relationships that we have in our homes and that we have in the church that we have in society.

And you find exhortation after exhortation beginning in chapter 12. And that goes all the way down to the middle of chapter 15.

And then in the middle of chapter 15, he begins to conclude his letter and he continues to teach doctrine.

He continues to make application, but he's drawing everything to a close. And what

I want to do this morning is to look at the very beginning of the conclusion of Paul's letter to the church at Rome.

I want to look at one verse. It's Romans 15, verse 14, Romans 15, verse 14.

So I encourage you to get a copy of scripture and look at that passage with me because I want to make some points from it to show how what a radical statement it is that Paul makes there, particularly in light of the fact that he's just finished in chapters 14 and up to verse 13 of chapter 15.

He's just finished talking about how the strong and weak

Christians in the church are to get along with each other because the church at Rome was made up of Jewish converts, people saved out of Judaism and people saved out of paganism,

Gentile life, Greeks, no Jewish background. And they came together with all of their baggage having been converted.

And there were some tensions. There were some things that they just learned to do differently growing up. The Jews ate certain foods, didn't eat certain foods.

They kept certain days as holidays. The Gentiles, they didn't have any of those dietary laws.

They didn't have any of those special days on the calendar that they looked to. And so the question is,

OK, now that we have the gospel, how are those that still want to honor holidays and observe certain dietary restrictions to get along with those who don't feel any conscience about that at all?

And Paul says that the people who want to add to what God requires, their own customs in order to feel like they're really being faithful, he says, those are really the weak

Christians. They don't understand the liberty that they have in Christ. And those who are strong are the ones who realize, no,

I have Christ and whatever he's told me to do, I'm going to do whatever he's forbidden me to do. I'm not going to do. But what he hadn't commanded, what he hadn't forbidden, we're free to do.

We're free to do as long as we do it to his glory and we do it in faith. And so this tension between those

Paul calls strong in the faith in chapter 15, verse one, and those he calls weak in the faith in chapter 14, verse one, it's something that had to be addressed by the gospel.

And having done that and done it in a wonderful way that is so instructive for the health of every congregation, every congregation,

Paul begins to conclude his letter. And he does so by making a statement that is startling, because you might think if you just dipped in starting at chapter 14 and read through the middle of 15, you might think that Paul is looking at this church that has some real potential division in it and could just bust apart that they need some outside help.

You know, they may need some experts to come in and tell them how to do church, how to get along with each other.

And in one sense, Paul himself is an outsider. He didn't start the church. He didn't know everybody in the church.

In fact, he'd never visited the church. He wanted to visit the church. But by this point, when he wrote the letter, he'd never been there.

He had some friends that were in the church, people he did know, but he had more folks in that church that he did not know.

Some he had heard about and some that he had not heard about. But after admonishing them in the first part of chapter 15 and chapter 14 and correcting their missteps and admonishing them not to let their preferences take on the role of conviction that they want to hold everybody to, he starts concluding the letter and he does it with this verse,

Romans 15 and 14. I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

He says, I'm confident in you. I'm convinced of good things about you.

In fact, I'm convinced that you have some capabilities. You have some fine qualities, some moral and intellectual character that qualifies you to care for one another in the congregation.

What he's saying in this verse is that genuine gospel devotion results in capable

Christian counseling. Genuine gospel devotion, if you're devoted to Christ genuinely, you're capable of doing competent Christian counseling.

There are two lessons in this verse that I want to call to your attention this morning. And the first is that gospel devotion allows for gracious deductions, gracious deductions, because that's what

Paul's doing here. He's deducing something. Now, I want to distinguish between a gracious deduction and a thoughtless, just kind of assumption.

And we should all be very careful not to just make thoughtless assumptions. And yet we're tempted to do that all the time.

This is what we see in John chapter one with Nathanael, when he heard about Jesus coming from Nazareth.

You remember what he said? Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? What's he doing?

He's making a thoughtless assumption because he knew of Nazareth. He knew that it's not much and that, you know, the people there just kind of a way of life.

And if you're from Nazareth, you're probably just going to be this type of person. And yet when his brother tells him, no, no, no, no, no.

There's a man you need to meet from Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? That's a thoughtless assumption.

That's not what I'm talking about. It's not what Paul does here. What Paul's doing is making a very gracious deduction.

He's making a proper deduction. It's the kind of reasoning that we see in Acts 17, when he went to the city of Athens.

And when you read that chapter, you'll see Paul walks through the streets and the scripture says that his soul was vexed.

It convulsed within him because he saw all these idols. He saw all these shrines to pagan gods that are no gods.

And so whenever he stands before the Athenian philosophers, he says, men of Athens, I can see that all over your city you have these idols and you're very religious people.

Well, what's he what's he saying to them? He's I just deduce you're religious. Why? Because you have so many religious shrines all around.

That's a proper deduction. Well, what Paul is doing here in our text is making a reasonable deduction about the members of the church in Rome.

He addresses them warmly. He calls them his brothers, though he had never met most of them.

He sees himself connected to them. Why? Because they're in Christ and he's in Christ.

And so there's a connection, though there's no personal relationship. He can say things about them.

He can feel things about them because of the unity that they have in Jesus, their spiritual family.

And the way that he says it, you see that he says, I myself am satisfied. The language there means that he's been persuaded.

He's been convinced and he remains convinced. There's something in Paul's thinking that has caused him to say what he is about to say, to say it without any doubt, to say it without any hesitation, to say it with full confidence.

Well, what is it? What is it that is operating in Paul's mind when he pens these words that allows him to write with such assurance?

What's the source of this confidence? Well, it's their genuine faith in Christ.

That's the sum and substance of it. Again, if you were to go back to the first chapter and look at verse seven, you would see that he addresses them as those who are loved by God, called to be saints.

So he sees them as people on whom God has set his saving love and for whom

God has called them and separated them to himself from the rest of the world. In verse eight of chapter one, he goes on to say that their faith has been proclaimed throughout the world.

So it's not just that they have a name of being Christians, but their reputation as Christians has gone out from Rome throughout the whole empire so that people say, you know what?

Those folks that meet there in Rome, followers of Jesus Christ, they're the real deal.

There's something about them that is sincere. Paul is writing to Christians. Genuine devotion to Christ is what they have.

The gospel is what they believe. The gospel is what's transformed them. And what is the gospel?

Well, the gospel is the message of Jesus Christ. The gospel is all about Christ. The way we teach it simply back in Cape Coral at Grace Baptist is like this.

The gospel is about Jesus. It tells us who he is, what he's done and why that matters.

If you can remember those three questions and then just start answering them from what the Bible teaches, you will explain the gospel.

Who is Jesus? Well, he's the eternal son of God who became a man. He's God in flesh.

Now, you can elaborate that for hours. But if you just say that much, you've got the nuts and bolts of the gospel on the way to being explained.

Well, what did he do? What did Jesus do? Well, he lived a life of perfect righteousness.

He obeyed all of God's commandments, which is a mind boggling thing when you stop and think about it. I mean, kids, think about this for a moment.

Children, listen to me for a second. Do you have do you have brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, your brothers and sisters ever get on your nerves a little bit?

Yeah. Can you imagine Jesus growing up in a home with other children born to his mother and never sinning?

I mean, he never did anything wrong. He always did what was right, but he never even said anything that was wrong.

Can you believe that? He didn't even think anything that was wrong because he was obeying

God perfectly because we don't and we need somebody to obey God perfectly for us.

And that's what Jesus did. He earned righteousness by fulfilling everything that God requires of you, your mom and dad, of me, of every person, you know.

But then even though he's the only righteous man who ever lived, he had no sin to die for on his own.

He willingly, voluntarily laid down his life on the cross. He endured God's wrath against sin on the cross.

And he did that so that sin could be paid for so that whoever trusts in him might be assured that his sin, her sin is paid for in Christ.

And then God raised him from the dead, demonstrating that everything that he had done was successful.

It was acceptable to God. And he rose into heaven. He is in heaven where he's ruling and reigning right now and the days on God's calendar already when he's going to come back.

So that's who Jesus is. That's what Jesus has done. And you know why that matters? That matters because we need what he's done.

We need him because we are sinners and we're not right with God and our sin separated us from God.

And if we live and die in our sin, then we're going to live and die under the judgment of God. And we're going to enter into an eternal condemnation in a place of hell that is just horrific to even think about.

But Jesus saves us from that by his life and death and resurrection. Well, that's the gospel.

That's what Paul preached. That's what he is announcing in the very first chapter of this letter.

That's what he's elaborated on. That's what he's drawn implications from when he started telling them in chapter 12 what this means for their daily lives.

He knows the gospel is the power of God to save everyone who believes.

And he's writing this letter to genuine believers. He's writing this letter to people who say we believe that Christ is our

Lord. They've been acted on by the power of God. So the youngest Christian, the weakest

Christian, is a person who's had God come to him or her in power.

The Bible says that if you're in Christ, you're a new creation. And that's true no matter how strong your faith is, no matter how weak your faith is.

It doesn't matter how old you are, how young you are, how long you've been trusting Jesus.

If you're in Christ, you're a new creation. And having Christ as your master, you have his word to instruct you, have his spirit to indwell you and teach you.

And Paul, knowing all of that about every Christian, even those he's never met, could say,

I'm satisfied. I'm confident in you because he knows that they are believers.

It's a gracious judgment that he makes. A gracious deduction. Brothers and sisters,

I wonder sometimes, especially in our circles where we take the word of God seriously and we really love doctrine and we want to be precise and we don't want to live in error.

When we see error, we want to be quick to to move away from it to greater understanding of the truth. I wonder if we are as gracious in our deductions about those who name the name of Christ with us.

They may not do everything the way we do. They may not see things exactly the way we do, but they are sincere and genuine in following after Christ as Lord.

They really are Christians. Well, if so, then we ought to take a page from the apostle

Paul here and believe the best about them. Believe that Christ shed his blood for them.

Believe that they, too, have been acted on by the power of God. Paul did this for the

Roman Christians. He saw their gospel devotion and he confidently made gracious deductions about them.

But what is it that he's satisfied about? What's the content of his confidence? Well, the answer to that is found in the last part of verse 14.

And in that second half of the verse, he mentions three things particularly. These things that relate to both their character and their competence.

The first two relate to character and then the third relates to competence. So let's look at he says,

I'm confident, I'm persuaded, I'm satisfied that you are full of all goodness.

This is a reference to their moral character, their moral character. What does it mean to be good?

Well, goodness is a positive moral quality. It's characterized by interest, sincere interest in the welfare of others.

That's why we read in the Bible about God in Psalm 119, for example, that you are good and you do good.

If you are good, if you have goodness, it won't just be something that you kind of keep to yourself, but it will result in your doing good for other people.

One writers explain it like this. Goodness is a virtue. It's holiness in action.

It results in a life characterized by deeds, motivated by righteousness and a desire to be a blessing.

It's a moral characteristic of a spirit filled person. Goodness is fruit of the spirit.

In Galatians chapter 522, Paul says the spirit produces this in the people in whom he inhabits.

So if you're a Christian, you're indwelt by the spirit and the spirit produces fruit in the people that he indwells and a significant part of that fruit is goodness.

Paul knew this about the Holy Spirit's work and he knew that as people who are devoted to the gospel, who are genuinely converted to Christ, that they are indwelt by the spirit.

Therefore, he could graciously deduce that they were full of all goodness. But along with that, he's also convinced that they're filled with all knowledge.

This relates to their intellectual character, their understanding, knowledge is that understanding that grows out of experience and learning.

Now, Paul's not suggesting that they're geniuses or that they don't have anything else to learn. He's talking about their knowledge of the ways of God in salvation.

They are in Christ and as such, they know God. In fact, they are full of such knowledge.

God has filled them and is filling them with such knowledge. This is what the

Bible teaches elsewhere. Genuine Christians are those who have been and are being taught by God.

Listen to the way the Apostle John explains it in 1 John 2. In verse 21, he writes, I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lies of the truth.

In other words, if you're a Christian, you know the truth. There's truth that has come to you in such a way that you've laid hold of it.

Doesn't mean you understand everything. Doesn't mean you understand and know all the truth, but you know the saving truth that's in Christ.

Otherwise, you would not have been set free because it is that truth, Jesus said, that sets us free.

John goes on in that same chapter in verses 26 and 27. He says, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

But the anointing that you have received from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you.

But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and there is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.

So you don't need anybody to teach you. Now, he's not saying that Christians don't need teachers. He's not suggesting that once you're converted, you don't need to listen to anybody because you've got everything that you need.

He's not suggesting that Christians all have equal grasp on the depth and the breadth of the truth revealed in Christ.

But what he does mean is that every Christian is filled with the saving knowledge of God in Christ.

There's not any secret knowledge that a special class of Christians has access to that other

Christians do not have access to. We all have God's word. We all have

God's spirit. Paul knows this, so he's confident and he says, I'm satisfied, convinced you're filled with all knowledge.

But not only do they have a certain character, moral character, intellectual character, they also have competence.

They have practical ability. Do you see this? He says, I'm satisfied,

I'm convinced that you're able to instruct one another. They have capability, specifically, they're capable to teach one another, to instruct one another.

That word instruct in our ESV, it's a very, very important word. It's a word that is jam -packed with significance.

One lexicon describes it this way. It means to counsel about avoidance or cessation of improper course of conduct.

It means admonish, warn, instruct. Another lexicon adds this. It means to provide instruction as to correct behavior and belief.

I like the way that one modern translation has rendered it. The Williams translation says this.

They quote this verse as saying, I'm convinced that you especially are competent to counsel one another.

What is Paul saying here? He's saying that he's certain that the Christians in Rome have everything that they need to be competent counselors of one another that can help each other grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ faithfully in this world.

They are, as Williams translates it, competent to counsel. Now, some of you may recognize in that phrase the title of a book that Jay Adams wrote in 1970, which he just called competent to counsel.

Jay Adams, in many respects, is like the father of the modern biblical counseling movement in which he believed that the

Bible is authoritative and sufficient. And what we have in Jesus Christ as Christians does indeed do what

Paul says the word of God does in Christians who are filled with God's spirit.

And so Jay Adams just took the Greek word there that is translated in our Bibles as instruct, and he turned it into a kind of a symbol or a calling card for biblical counsel.

And you may have heard of it, euthetic counseling. That word euthetic comes from the

Greek word behind our word instruct, eutheteo. And Jay Adams is just building on what the apostle

Paul says here that, yes, what Paul says we're competent to do, we ought to be willing to take up and start doing with one another.

And thus this biblical counseling effort began in the latter part of the 20th century.

When you stop and think about what Paul's saying, you have to admit it's a pretty bold claim, isn't it?

People that in the previous chapter he's called weak, weak Christians, people that he doesn't know personally who are

Christians, he says you're competent to counsel one another. So there are two questions that immediately come to mind when you see this in the sacred text and you think,

OK, this is God's word. This is the spirit of God telling us through the apostle Paul that in a church like this.

As Christians, we have competency to counsel.

I don't know many of you personally, but I'd be willing to bet there's some of you sitting there thinking, I don't think that's true of me.

Or you might be thinking, I don't think that's true of her. But here the Bible says, no, it is true.

It is true. So the first question is, well, how in the world can it be true? How can it be true that Christians who are weak in faith when it comes to being able fully to enjoy the freedom that we have in Christ, how can even those

Christians be competent to counsel? Well, there are three answers I want to set before you to that questions.

We've already covered this ground a little bit, but I just want to elaborate it again. We're competent to counsel because of what it means to be a

Christian. I just want to underscore this. I fear sometimes that we downplay what it means to be a

Christian. And a lot of that perhaps is due to what we lived through in the 20th century and first part of the 21st century, where the idea of becoming a

Christian has been watered down might be a good way to say it. And it's been reduced to something that you just do, you know, when you're eight or nine years old or you say these words or pray this prayer or get baptized or join the church.

And that makes you a Christian. I don't think anybody would say it that blatantly, but it comes across that way.

And you probably could have long conversations with your pastor. I know I'd be willing to have them with you about people that I've talked to over the course of my ministry who are as lost as they can be.

They give no evidence whatsoever of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. And yet they're convinced they're Christian because they're born in America or because they went to church when they were little or their grandpa told them they were

Christian or they have some some of them I've seen have little cards that they carry around with them in their wallet or the back of the

Bibles that says, you know, if you ever doubt you're a Christian, remember what you did on June 3rd, 1963, you know, when you prayed these words and they say, see,

I'm a Christian. They can be living like the devil, but they've got a card that tells them they're

Christian because somebody told them that's all it takes to be a Christian. Well, when you consider what the

Bible says, a Christian is a new creation. Indwelt by the spirit of God.

Transformed. Born again. I mean, those that's language that the

Bible uses to describe something that is more radical and significant than most of the time we think about.

So, brothers and sisters sitting here today in Jesus Christ, if you're in Christ, that's true of you.

That's true of you. That's true of the weakest, youngest Christian that you know you've been acted on by God.

A Christian has been given a new nature, a nature that loves Jesus, that honors

Jesus as Lord. A Christian is someone who's not ashamed to say what the apostle Paul says about his relationship with Christ.

You know what Paul's favorite self -designation was as a follower of Jesus? Slave, slave.

I'm a slave of Jesus, bond servant. In other words, I have a master now.

His will is my will. What he wants is my duty. My life belongs to him.

My responsibility is to honor him, to live for him. That's what Christianity does for you.

That's what becoming a follower of Jesus results in. A Christian is someone whose mind is being renewed as he's growing more and more and thinking rightly more and more about life and reality, about truth and goodness and beauty.

He wants to more and more love the truth. A Christian is someone whose will is being more and more conformed to the will of God that's revealed in Scripture.

It's not perfect. We're not perfect, but we're intentional. Christians are people who whenever they can be convinced this is what the word says.

They're not going to just say, well, that might be true, but we've never done it that way before. We're not going to do it that way now. That's not the mind of a

Christian. A Christian says, OK, Lord, I don't get this. Not what

I've been used to. Maybe I've been wrong a long time. But this is what your word says. And I'm the slave of Christ.

And if this is what Christ wants, then I'm going to put my feet on that path. And I'm going to follow him.

A Christian begins to see his choices shaped by what his master will be pleased with.

So how he spends his time will begin to be influenced and shaped by Christ's revealed will, how he spends his money, his leisure, his energies, his influence.

All of that will be more and more increasingly shaped by that which glorifies

Jesus Christ. Paul knew that about Christianity. And he says,

I'm writing to people who are Christians. And so I can say this. They're competent to counsel each other.

But there's a second reason. A Christian is someone who's not alone. Again, I've mentioned this, but think about it.

You're a Christian. You're never on your own. Never. Your friends, your family can forsake you.

And you might feel like you're the only one who's willing to stand or to go and do what

God's clearly revealed that you ought to go and do. You're never alone. Why? Because you are indwelt by God himself.

It's mind boggling to think about that. But we ought to think about it more. To be a Christian is to have

God through his spirit take up residence in your life. That's why

Paul warns us not to grieve the spirit, because he's a person. He's in us not to quench the spirit by going against what the spirits revealed in the word that we ought to be and do.

The spirit lives in us as our teacher, our comforter, our guide. But not only that, thirdly,

Christians are not without clear revelation. We've been given directions on how to live in God's word.

We have a book. We're not left to our own imaginations. We're not trying to figure it out on our own about what pleases

God, what he wants. God's word reveals very clearly what is right and wrong, what is good, bad, what is true and false.

You think about this for a moment. This is an important and very important lesson for us to learn and relearn and remind each other of that the word of God that has been given to us through martyrs hands over centuries, it's come down to us is the word that the spirit of God inspired so that we might know the mind of God where he has spoken.

We don't have to wonder what God thinks is right, what God thinks is wrong.

We have a book. And you know what Paul says about this book in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, he says all scripture has been breathed out by God.

It's inspired of God and it's profitable. It's useful for doctrine.

You want to know what to believe? Get your beliefs from the Bible. It's profitable for reproof.

So do you need to be straightened out in some areas? Well, join the club. That's what the Bible is for.

For correction, you need to be shown that the path you're on is wrong. The Bible does that.

And then he says for training and righteousness, four things that he says the Bible is profitable for, which, by the way, two of those four things are negative reproof and correction.

You know what that means? If you read the Bible and you only have your ideas confirmed all the time and you're never corrected, you're not reading it right, because half of the purposes that it's given to us for are to correct what's not right in our thinking.

And that will happen for the rest of our lives. But Paul adds to that then in verse 17 in 2 Timothy 3 that this is true.

It's profitable so that the man of God might be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

He said, if you have the Bible, the good work that God calls his servants to carry out, the

Bible is enough to shape that, guide that. What a way to to live.

What an amazing life to have the spirit of God himself indwell you, to have Jesus Christ as your

Lord, to have a new nature so that your eyes are open to understand more and more what is right, wrong, good, true, bad and beautiful, and to know that you're being indwelt by the spirit who's given us the word so that you can grow, you can change.

It might be that you're here this morning and you know about Christianity, but you've never trusted Christ. Wouldn't you want to live like that when you want that life to know

God, to have God live in you, to be given direction from God's very word for you?

You can know God right now by trusting his son, the Lord Jesus. Children, this is true for you, too.

You don't have to wait until you're an adult. Young people, you don't have to wait until you're 25.

This good news is a message for sinners like you and me, no matter how old, how young.

And the message is this, that God saves sinners like us through his son. Turn from your sin and trust yourself to Christ.

He will save you. You don't have to jump through a hoop. You don't have to go through a ritual. You have to confess

Jesus Christ as Lord from your heart. And this is the kind of life that you will be given because of God's word.

Because of God's work in us, brothers and sisters, his provisions for us, we are, as our text says, able to instruct one another.

We're capable counselors for each other. That doesn't mean that every Christian is equally gifted to counsel each other.

And what it might mean is as you are growing in your grace and knowledge of Christ more and more, that your competent counsel may include this.

It should include it for all of us. When you see a need in a brother or sister and you're trying to help them, your counsel might be, you know what, we ought to bring another

Christian in on this. Let's get wisdom from our pastor. Let's talk to this sister, this brother who's walked with the

Lord more, who has a longer way of living as a

Christian. Sometimes such counsel is the best counsel that we can give.

But what we all should embrace is that what is said of Christians in this verse is true of every

Christian you know. Well, that raises a second question then. We should ask, what does this mean for how we should approach the

Christian life? If it's true that because we're Christians, we're capable of instructing one another, well, can we just kind of sit back and rest on our laurels and say,

OK. You know, I'm a Christian, so that must be true of me. No, it ought to be like saying, sick them to a bulldog.

You know, OK, this is true. Then I've got this word, I need to grow in this word so that I can get better, so that I can learn more.

It ought to motivate me to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. We should make it a goal to grow in goodness and knowledge.

To be a capable counselor doesn't mean you can never grow to be better equipped, better prepared to help brothers and sisters with good insights and helpful words.

Well, how do you do that? How do you grow? It's through the ordinary ways that God's provided for you to grow.

Come to church regularly. Listen to the word of God as it's taught, be involved in Bible studies, read the

Bible yourself, meditate on it, memorize it, pray, pray and ask God to shape you more and more into the image of Christ so that you can become an increasingly faithful, useful

Christian. Live openly as a Christian. Don't be one way on Sunday and another way on Monday.

Seek to tell other people about Jesus so that they, too, can be reconciled to God. And as you live like this,

God, by his spirit and his word, will mature you. You know, there's a simple way to summarize what

I've just described about how you can grow. It's this. I say it all the time. Find a healthy church and build your life around it.

Build your life around it. Don't just show up. Build your life around it. Get involved with people in a church like this so that you are willing to be known by them and you're willing to know them and have the confidence that Paul has that in Christ we're spiritual family, in Christ we're indwelt by the spirit, in Christ we have goodness, we have understanding, knowledge, and in Christ we have some capabilities that can serve one another.

When you do that, you'll be in a context of brothers and sisters who are also capable counselors, and you will grow in your ability to counsel competently.

And whenever some expert shows up and says, oh, you guys have not been trained in the best universities, you need special knowledge if you're going to be spiritually useful to people in your church or maybe those that have suffered some unusual injuries or sorrows of heart in their lives.

You can go back to Romans 15 and 14 and say, we might be able to learn some things from people who've studied stuff that we haven't had a chance to study in certain ways, but we don't need anything outside of what

God has given to us in Christ. In Christ, we have what we need to be competent counselors of one another.

So let's encourage each other to think rightly about the power of the gospel for all those who believe.

When you meet someone who is dedicated to Jesus Christ as Lord, then make gracious deductions about them.

And again, I know there are false converts all around us. I know that. I know there are spiritual hypocrites.

And I'm not saying we close our eyes to that, pretend they don't exist. But I am saying that where we have reason to believe that someone is calling on Christ savingly as we are, that we should then take all this biblical truth that we see in the

Apostle Paul, applying it to the Christians in Rome and try to apply it ourselves and be gracious in our deductions about them.

We should encourage one another to believe all that God says about us.

Brothers and sisters, on your worst day as a Christian, these things are still true of you.

When you feel spent, when you feel like you don't remember, when you think you are have just been confused, remember this, that God says about you because you're in Christ, that you are full of goodness.

You've been filled with all knowledge. And because of him and his grace at work in you, you are competent to counsel one another.

Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for giving us such a clear guide on how we're to live in this world.

We shudder to think what we would be, where we would be if we were left to ourselves, if we had to try to figure out how to live.

So thank you for giving us the scripture. Thank you for your spirit who lives within us. God, please, by your word and spirit, keep leading us to Christ.

Help us to believe the things that your word says about us. Help us to accept the high calling and wonderful responsibility and privilege to grow more and more in goodness, in knowledge that we might become even increasingly useful, capable counselors of our brothers and sisters.