4. What is Nouthetic Counseling? Pt.1

Amen. All right, this is part four in our series on biblical counseling, and we've laid some groundwork so far. And so tonight we're going to answer the question, what is euthetic counseling? Just to review a little bit, the first session we had was an introduction to biblical counseling, and then we laid some groundwork as to what the status of counseling is in our country.

In fact, pretty much around the world today, and we noticed that there was a crisis in counseling. And we gave a lot of background information, foundational information that was helpful. And then to start to lay the groundwork for biblical counseling, we looked at the question, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling?

That just summarizes our first three sessions. Tonight, as I said, we're going to start a new topic, what is euthetic counseling? And this will actually take us two weeks to go through this whole thing, so I'm not exactly sure where we'll end tonight.

Counseling as Change Through Scripture and the Holy Spirit

First thing we need to know about euthetic counseling is it is counseling for change. Now, you might say, well, duh. I mean, isn't that what counseling is all about? Yes and no, because secular counseling is not necessarily seeking to change the person.

What they seek to change is your feelings. They want to relieve guilt feelings. They want to make you happy. So in that sense, you can say somewhat it's for change. But biblical counseling is looking for a much deeper change, which we will examine as we go forward.

So the goal of Christian counseling is change. That is the number one goal that is set forth in Christian counseling. And one of the things that we realize is lasting change can only occur when the Bible is ministered through the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you talk to any secular psychiatrist, psychologist, they will never say that they are looking to change the individual. They're looking to make changes in attitudes and things, but not change the individual.

The goal of biblical counseling is to make lasting change, deep change, and substantial change. Now here's one of the things that is very important to understand. There are approximately 230 schools, and that is different ideas or basis or platforms.

230 schools of thought in secular psychiatry and psychology. And guess what? They don't agree. That's why when you see a psychiatrist come up and be sworn in as an expert witness, it's almost laughable because you can parade 10, 15 other ones in who will completely disagree with him and also have the qualifications of being experts.

And that's a common thing in courtrooms today. But they have this in common. They all ignore the scripture. At the most, secular counseling who is being practiced by a believer, and there are Christians who practice secular psychology, they may try to incorporate scripture into it, but they only give it honorable mention, so to speak.

They're still basically at heart secular and humanistic psychologies. In fact, they all teach concepts that are contrary to the scriptures. And one of the things that we noticed in one of the past messages is that the Freudian method in particular, one of the results of Freudian psychology is it takes responsibility away from the individual and puts the blame on somebody else.

So here's one of the major differences in biblical counseling. Only the Bible can make one wise unto salvation through faith. That's understandable. Only the Bible can make one wise unto salvation. That's why when we start talking about biblical counseling, somebody will ask, well, what about somebody who is not a believer?

How do you counsel somebody biblically? What's your answer to that? What would you think? Share the gospel. That's it. The very first step is the gospel. In fact, even if you know it's a believer and you're doing any counseling with them, you always want to get that out of the way first anyway.

Make sure that they have made a credible profession of faith. Just because somebody is sitting in church, you may not know whether they're saved or not. I had an uncle who was married to my mother's sister, and he attended church his whole life and was saved at the age, it was either late 80s or early 90s, but attended church faithfully his entire life and admitted very late in life that he had never become a Christian and repented and came into the kingdom.

So don't just presume that because somebody is sitting in church that they are in fact a believer. And this is another hallmark of biblical counseling, is only the Bible produces the desired and lasting change in the lives of people.

Notice what it says. Only the Bible produces desired, in other words, the change that you want. And we'll get into that a little bit more in the session later on. And lasting change. I didn't put that capital L in there on purpose, but it's good that it's there.

It emphasizes it. Lasting change. People who are ministered to by the scriptures through the power of the Holy Spirit can make lasting change, real legitimate change in their behavior and their character.

Why? Because the scriptures take the person to the cross and the tomb. And if there's going to be any change, it's going to be because they're presented with the person and work of Jesus Christ. The saved man can learn obedience and service from God's word.

We can learn to obedience. Obedience is something that can be taught and it can be practiced. In fact, we're told that. We're told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, which means put it into practice.

Jerry Bridges wrote a great book, The Practice of Godliness. And if you've never read that book, that's an excellent book about sanctification. And then the Bible gives a four step model to change lives.

How many people in this room have never heard of that before? Reaching for my gun. Because I have taught that how many times from the pulpit? How many times? Okay. Who knows? Where is that four step model found?

That's exactly right. Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

I don't like the translation of that word adequate. It's really, I prefer the word perfection or perfect. That the man of God may be perfect and equipped for every good work, which is what the essence of it is really.

Here's the four steps. Four steps. First is doctrine or teaching. You have to know what right and wrong is before you can make any change. You have to know what, there has to be some sort of standard.

Reproof or conviction. The second step is you have to be told or shown where the behavior is aberrant or in a violation of God's word. And that's where the conviction takes place. If there's no conviction in the heart, there's going to be no change.

So it's a very important part. And our society does not like words like reprove, rebuke, and exhort. Interesting. But that's where the change takes place. Correction. This is actually where the change in heart begins.

If there is no correction, then there is no change. There has to be correction. And then the last step is training in righteousness or instruction. Instruction in how, where do we go from here? What do I do now?

Okay. Any questions on that? And now I did a whole teaching just on that, on those verses. And that is, I'm sure it's available somewhere on our archives. All right. Any questions on that? Because this is crucial.

All of biblical counseling is going to follow these steps. And how do we know these steps are inspired? Because they're in the word of God. Second topic is Jesus Christ is the center of all true Christian counseling.

It's amazing how many, quote, Christian counseling centers never mention Christ. They have methodologies. They have programs and whatnot. But Jesus Christ is the center of all true Christian counseling.

Merely saying that it's God-centered is not enough because unless it's Trinitarian, it's not Christian counseling. And how do we know who Jesus Christ is? He's revealed in his word. So you can see how the idea of Jesus Christ and it being biblical counseling is all meshed together.

You cannot counsel and call it Christian or biblical counseling without using the word of God because that's how Jesus is revealed to us. And so Christian counseling, oh, by the way, you'll notice that throughout the lesson, sometimes I'll call it Christian counseling, sometimes it's biblical counseling, sometimes it's euthetic counseling.

I'm not going senile. That's done intentionally just to show you that they are synonymous regardless of what some people call Christian counseling. There are some people who call themselves biblical counselors and yet they don't use the Bible.

So I just interchange the words periodically. One, it doesn't sound so redundant, and two, just to see if you're awake. When we talk about Christian counseling, especially the topic tonight is euthetic counseling, the Greek word for kind, where do we get that from?

Where do we get euthetic from? A lot of people wonder that. That's because the Greek word for confrontation, the noun is euthesis, the verb is eutheteo, and of course with the various parts of speech and whatnot, there's all different spellings or different usages for that word, but that's the basis of it.

The verb is eutheteo, the noun is euthesis. Now here's something, and this is one of the reasons why we're doing this Bible study over again, is because all Christians, not just pastors, should be engaged in euthetic activity.

In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say all Christians are engaged in it. The only question is, are you doing it right, and are you competent to do it? And we'll get into that between this week and next week.

So all Christians, not just pastors, should be engaged. Now how do we know that, and why would I say that? Because in Colossians 3 .16, the Apostle Paul writes this, Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another.

That admonishing, there's that word. That's the word eutheteo. Admonishing one another with psalms and hymns, spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness into your heart. So what he's really saying there is confronting one another euthetically.

And so if you sit down with a brother or sister and you start sharing anything on an intimate nature, the struggles you're having in life, and if you give any kind of advice or even consolation, you're confronting euthetically.

The only question is, are you doing it accurately? And are you doing it rightly? And do you know what you're doing? And that's one of the core reasons we're having this. And this is what I'm saying here.

This admonishing is an everyday activity. And when I mean everyday activity, I don't mean that you have to do it every day. I mean, in other words, it's not just for special occasions. It's not just, okay, I'm going to go to the pastor and I'm going to be euthetically confronted today.

No, you can be euthetically confronted by your mother or father sitting at the kitchen table eating your breakfast. I see some smiles here. I think some of you have been euthetically confronted by your parents sitting around the tables, which is a good thing.

Also, we see the same concept in Romans 15, 14. Apostle Paul says, and concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able also to admonish one another.

That's that same word, same Greek word there. But there's something interesting in Romans 15, 14, and we'll point that out now. Look at two qualities that the apostle mentions that enable them to confront one another, knowledge and goodness, knowledge and goodness.

Now, there needs to be a lot more said on those two topics. That will come back later next week. We'll get into what that means, goodness and knowledge. While this counseling should be done every day by every Christian, it is especially the work of the Christian minister.

And we'll actually have a whole section next week on why and explain that a little bit further. But it's done by everyone every day. And in fact, one of the things that you'll notice as we get more into what euthetic counseling is, the pastor counsels euthetically every Sunday morning when he preaches.

Preaching of the gospel is euthetic confrontation. Well, we'll get into it. I'm jumping ahead of myself here. The proclamation of the gospel is euthetic confrontation. I just said that. Paul used euthetic confrontation in both public and private ministry.

And that's where we get our example from. Euthetic confrontation can be done in a variety of settings and in a variety of places. And we have an example of this in the apostle Paul. Acts 20, verses 17 to 38, anybody knows what that is?

It's a test. It's Paul saying goodbye to the elders of Ephesus when he pulls into Miletus, and he's bidding farewell. His final remarks to the church, to the elders in specific, of Ephesus, are an example of his euthetic ministry.

And I'm not going to preach on the topic. I mean, there's three messages in that topic at least. So I'm just going to summarize what Paul said. Firstly, Paul served with humility of mind with many tears and temptations.

It's showing the hard attitude. And this will come up later next week when we talk about qualifications for counseling. He held back nothing that was profitable to them. Notice what the focus here is.

Paul's focus was not on himself. His focus was on the people he was ministering to. He taught them publicly and from house to house. And again, we'll expand more on this, but it's interesting. Euthetic confrontation happens in a variety of places.

When our guys go down to Port Jeff and they're standing on the street corner, that's very public euthetic confrontation. Whether they know it or not, they're confronting euthetically because they're presenting the truth of God's Word to people who are obviously in need of teaching.

He taught both Jews and Greeks. In other words, he didn't distinguish. He confronted everybody equally and the same. He showed them the need for repentance towards God and faith toward Jesus Christ. This is all just a summary of Acts 20, 17 to 38.

His ministry was to testify of the gospel of the grace of God. That's at the heart of it. Why can we change when we are ministered to by the Word of God? Because it's a gospel of grace. It's all by God's grace.

He declared to them the whole counsel of God. He didn't hold back anything. One of the hallmarks of Reformed theology is Scripture alone. Toto's Scripture is what I was looking for. I know Scripture alone, but Toto's Scripture.

All of the counsel of God. Paul says that he didn't hold back anything. He declared to the whole counsel of God. It's not always easy to minister the whole counsel of God because not everybody is very gracious to receive it as you send it forth.

Sometimes it's difficult, but you have to do it, even though it's not popular. In Acts 20, verse 31, this is right in the middle of that section, and he says, Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish.

There's that word. That's that word nithiteo. Each one with tears. Notice how he wraps this up. He's confronting, but he's doing it with love. He's doing it with compassion, and he's doing it because he loves the people.

The essence of his ministry was to warn them of sin, and isn't that the main purpose of the Gospel, is to warn of the dangers of sin and to present the grand antidote, the salvation we have in Jesus Christ.

And then he taught the Ephesians by example. He makes it very clear that he did not shrink back from not only teaching, but from demonstrating in very practical ways how an elder or how a Christian brother should behave.

And Paul demonstrated passion in his counseling. Three years he spent with the church in Ephesus, night and day without ceasing, and he ministered in various ways. He ministered publicly, marketplace, individually, in groups, in families.

In other words, Paul didn't care what the venue was. He didn't care what the audience was. He just was faithful in presenting the Gospel message and confronting the people in whatever format and whatever location that he happened to be.

There are three words that are used to translate New Thesis in the New Testament, and you'll see these throughout, depending on which translations you use. First is admonish. We've seen that. The NASB uses admonish a lot.

To teach. Now, there are other words for teach. We'll get into that a little bit later as well, but sometimes it's translated teach, and sometimes the word is translated to warn. And it depends on the context, which one they use to translate it, but you can see sometimes they even translate it as counsel.

I think that some of the newer translations, especially now since Nothetic Counseling is reaching the main lines of Christianity. Now, here's an interesting point. There is no one English word that gives the full meaning of the Greek word.

That's why it's difficult. You've heard it said, you know, that if it's going to be defined, the Greeks have a word for it. The Greek language is incredible, especially the Koine Greek that God used to communicate his word in because it's such a rich, full language and with the various tenses and the various words that just gives so much meaning to it.

And that's why it's difficult to translate sometimes into English. There's three elements to Nothetic Counseling, and this is very important. First, Nothetic Confrontation always implies a problem and presupposes an obstacle to overcome.

In other words, if I want to tell somebody, I just want to teach you something, the Greek word that would normally be used, it would be didasko, from which we get the word didactic. I'm sure you're familiar with, you know, like we know that the epistles of the New Testament are didactic literature.

That's teaching, all right? But if the teaching is meant to correct behavior, then notheteo would probably be used, and Nothetic Counseling is more than just teaching. It's teaching to overcome some sort of an issue or some sort of a problem, and that's pretty much what counseling does.

Biblical confrontation implies something is wrong in the life of the individual. That's where the whole idea comes from. And the Greek word didasko, to teach, differs from notheteo in that it doesn't imply a problem, not necessarily.

It can, but not necessarily. Didasko simply suggests the communication of data. For example, when I teach geometry, I'm not nothetically confronting my classroom. I'm merely teaching them geometric figures and formulas, axioms, and hypotheses, okay?

You see, does that make a difference? Yeah? Okay. Now, sometimes if my class doesn't do their homework, then I have to confront them nothetically. Didasko exclusively refers to the activity of the instructor.

In other words, as the instructor, I'm teaching something, all right? And I'm teaching. Whether or not the class is accepting it and learning something doesn't take away from the fact that I am, in fact, involved in didasko.

New Thesis focuses on the confronter and the confronted. There's more of a relationship between the two people. Now, there is a relationship between student and teacher, but it's different when you're involved in counseling.

Again, New Thesis presupposes the need for change and the person confronted. And there's a word in that sentence that crops up frequently in Reformed Baptist circles. What's the word? Presuppose. We're presuppositional in many things, not just our apologetics, but there are many presuppositions that we have.

And, by the way, that's the word to use. I don't like to use the word assume. We presuppose because our presuppositions are based upon certain things. The fundamental purpose of new thetic confrontation is personality and behavioral change.

Star that, underline it, fill it with exclamation points, whatever you got to do to remember that's one of the core issues involved there. The whole goal of new thetic confrontation is to change the personality of the individual.

And when I say personality, I'm speaking biblically, not speaking psychologically. I'm not talking about we're going to change an introvert into an extrovert. That's not what I'm talking about in personality.

I'm talking about the essence of the being. We are being conformed to the image of Christ. The whole idea of the new birth and sanctification is that we are to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

New thetic confrontation is a biblical process to aid in sanctification, specifically where the person is engaged, encountered some sort of an issue, some sort of a problem. So it's not merely... We are looking for behavioral change.

If you have a problem with cursing, yeah, we want you to stop. But we want the heart to change, not merely the behavior. You can stop cursing because, you know, mom's going to stick a bar of ivories open your mouth.

Ivory's too mild. Lifebuoy, lifebuoy, that was the one. That was the one from A Christmas Story, remember? Caused him to go blind. But, I mean, so you can force somebody to change behavior, but changing personality is something that only the Holy Spirit can do.

And that's one of the goals here. So the second element, inherent new thetic confrontation, is that problems are solved by verbal means. It is definitely, and that's one of the things you'll see later on when we get into the qualifications.

And that is that you need to be able to speak, need to be able to teach, need to be able to explain and communicate in a way that is efficient. The distinctive feature of new thesia is training by word of mouth.

Okay? And that's why I don't counsel over the telephone because the verbal communication is enhanced by the visual side of it as well. But it's mostly by the verbal. And I don't just give somebody a textbook and say, all right, read this and then call me in the morning.

But it's explaining, so it's very verbal. Confrontation is person to person. It can be formal or informal. And of course, most of you who are not going to wind up in some sort of ministry, it would be more on the informal side.

But that doesn't mean that it's any less important or less effective. That's why it's important that we learn how to counsel according to the Word of God. Biblical confrontation aims to change the sinful patterns of behavior to conform to biblical standards.

Again, just reiterating the same point. Change is the goal. The change, a real, lasting, effectual change in the life of a believer. That means real change of the person, not merely behavioral change.

And personality change involves the following. Confession, repentance, and development of new biblical patterns. Only makes sense. How do we do that? I know I'm jumping way ahead. How do we do that? You're actually going much deeper than I had anticipated.

No, it's good. I just wanted a simple answer. Look at 2 Timothy 3 .16. It's a four-step model to change. How do we get confession, repentance, and new doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness?

So there is, you see how it all works together. Biblical confrontation involves the verbal ministry of the Word made effectual by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is so crucial. That's why we started in our second session about the role of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is essential for any biblical change to take place.

Failure to confront others, especially those over whom you have authority, is sin. And you can take specifically the parent-child relationship as the easiest one. Parents, if you're soft on your children just because you feel sorry for them, you're not doing them any favors.

Pastors, elders, if you're soft, you can't be soft on your congregation just because it's uncomfortable to confront somebody in sin. And anybody that you have authority over. Anybody want to take exception with that?

Good. I didn't have an answer for you anyway. No, I'm kidding. We do have an example in Scripture of Eli. Remember old Eli, the old high priest, and what he didn't do? For I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever, this is the Lord speaking, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them.

Remember, they were a bunch of rascals and they were taking the best for themselves and abusing their position as priests and Eli did not rebuke them. He failed to speak to his sons in a manner to effect change.

He didn't speak soon enough, strictly enough, or seriously enough. Just a little example from the Word of God. There are three more elements of biblical counseling that will be discussed at a later time, but I'm just going to introduce them here.

Timing, authority, and necessity. We'll look at those again next week, but just to show you that there's more to it than just what we're going through tonight. Most psychological counseling tries to examine the intricacies of the whys and the wherefores of behavior.

Biblical counseling discusses what? That's not a question. It discusses the what. So now here's the three whats. What was done? What must be done to rectify it? What should future responses be? Notice it's what happened?

Why are you here? Why are we confronting someone? What must be done to rectify it and what should the future response be? Why don't we ask the why question? Why don't you say, why did you do that? We know why.

Why? Why? That's it. We know why somebody sins because of their sinful nature. Why does a scorpion sting? Why does an alligator bite? It's in their nature. Why does man sin? Sin on nature. Asking why questions wastes time and asking too many why questions may lead to speculation and blame shifting.

This is what happens in the Freudian model. What do we wind up doing? Got to find somebody to blame. Why did you do this? And it's usually somebody in your past has done something to cause you to respond in the way that you have.

Remember the goal of the second element of biblical counseling is to bring about change in the direction of greater conformity to biblical principles and practices. So that's what we're looking for. We don't need to know why.

We know why. The third element of biblical counseling is that verbal confrontation is always intended to benefit the individual sinner. Whenever you're in a position, whether it's just sitting with a friend who has asked you for advice or if you're in a more serious ecclesiastical setting, the goal and the focus is always for the benefit of the individual, just like church discipline is always for the benefit of the person who has sinned.

And the human relationship that most typifies this is the parent-child relationship. We see that in Ephesians 6 .4. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

Why do we discipline our children? Because we want them to grow up, first and foremost, to serve the Lord. And not to harm themselves. Why do you tell the child not to touch the hot stove? Because it makes it inconvenient for you.

1 Corinthians 4 .14. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. Biblical confrontation implies changing what is in the person's life which hurts him. And again, that's not the easiest thing to do because people hold on to, and the thing that is hurting them may be the very thing that they love and cherish.

You have the example of David and Bathsheba. David's sin began when he looked at her with desire in his heart. David knew he sinned and failed to repent. He tried to cover his sin. How did he try to cover his sin?

First, he tried to trick Uriah. Then he murders her. And it was murder. If I was investigating the case, I would have had David in handcuffs and on his way to the Supreme Court. Then Nathan confronted David with his sin.

Notice Nathan used verbal means. He tells a story, a very effective storyteller. Judgment is pronounced. And then once judgment is pronounced, what do we find out? The sword is going to be upon David's household, and his wives are going to be ravaged.

And finally, David confesses and grieves and writes Psalm 51. Read Psalm 51. Just a little review. This kind of sums it up. Three words to translate New Thesis. Admonish, teach, and warn. Three elements to New Thetic confrontation.

It always implies a problem. Problems are solved by verbal means. It's always for the benefit of the sinner. Any questions?