Dear Biblical Counselor
Note: An earlier version of this article was published on 9/30/2019. My apologies for any confusion.
Preface
Biblical counseling is a somewhat recent movement within Christendom. From an earthly perspective, this is largely due to the work of teachers within institutions like ACBC and CCEF, which produce conferences, trainings, books, and the like. Such resources provide teaching on counseling paradigms, systematic theology, basic biblical interpretation, and best practices for people wanting to apply biblical counseling principles to their lives. Some of these institutions provide accreditation, others certificates, and still others Master's degrees. Those who receive such training often make biblical counseling a significant part of their ministry to the church.
With such a boon, there are an increasing number of people who are, or are aspiring to be, biblical counselors. It is to that group of people that I write this article.
Dear aspiring/new biblical counselor,
After taking counseling training, writing essays, rejoicing in biblical truth, and finding a well of delight for your own soul, I’m sure you’re ready to do biblical counseling. I hope you’re full of joy and excitement; I’m excited for you! Is there any greater joy than helping someone apply the truths of Scripture to their life, that they might love Jesus Christ better? I know of no greater work.
I pray that you would always have confidence, not in yourself, but in the power of God’s Spirit to use His Word. My friend, I write this letter to you because I want you to have that confidence today, tomorrow, and unto eternity. Why am I so serious? Because counseling is brutal work, fraught with dangers and pitfalls as well as joys and triumphs. Yet, by the grace of God, we can persevere until Christ takes us home.
To that end, I have four things I want to say. Please, hear me as a friend speaking to a friend, as one who has peered over the shoulders and into the eyes of better men and women than myself and seen the trials up ahead. I am an aspiring counselor as well, so these truths are just as much for me as they are for you.
The dregs of the earth
First, dear counselor, know this: if the Lord grants you a long, grace-empowered ministry, you will likely work with the very worst of society. Bitter spouses, abusive husbands, angry pastors, rebellious children, and jealous singles are merely the tip of the iceberg. You will meet men who have been enslaved to pornography for over a decade. You will confront the serial adulterer, who has just been caught sleeping with the twentieth man this year. You will weep over the teenager who just aborted her second baby. You will fear for the suicidal single man, who tried to take his life for the third time this week. You will speak with the gossip who has destroyed every single one of her friendships. You will pray for the man who is so stressed he can't sleep because he has made work his savior. You will try to comfort the recently widowed grandmother who can't see through the darkness, who mourns as if God Himself died. You will speak to the discouraged, the broken-hearted, the hopeless, those who might speak good theology yet cannot seem to find Jesus Christ.
Your ears will hear of the strangest behaviors, inexplicable except for one thing: the curse of sin. You will never wrap your mind around why people sin; sin is insane. Obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and compulsive lying are just the minor leagues of aberrant behavior. The soul can be contorted and distorted and destroyed in ten thousand different ways. The hardness and blindness of the human heart will shatter the best of your efforts, the most potent of truths. The flesh is twisted, evil, and corrupt. Demons are real and really do possess people. Satan is alive and truly is the prince of the power of the air, the god of this world. (Ro 8:5–8, Eph 2:2, 2 Cor 4:4). You will quickly find that counseling is not as simple as just quoting Bible verses; your best efforts, most often, will not be enough
So, friend, do not be surprised at the sin, nor at the difficulty of counseling—expect it. But do not fear; do not tremble. When the Lord Jesus Christ entered into this world, He was not surprised at the heinousness of sin. When He sees your sin, He is not surprised; why would He be surprised at theirs?
Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness. His grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. For the good that they want, they do not do, but they practice the very evil that they do not want. (Ro 5:8, Lam 3:22–23, 2 Cor 12:9, Ro 7:19) I know that you know these verses, but don’t just quote them to your counselee; believe them for yourself! May they be a buoy to your soul, an ever-present help in time of need.
Tempted and tried
Second, dear counselor, know this: some of your greatest temptations will come within the counseling ministry. When you deal with such sinners who are in the trenches of sin, do you realize that you will get some dirt all over your face? When you counsel a perpetually angry person, they will get angry at you. The temptation will be to respond in self-righteous anger and seethe against her. When you speak with a gossip, they will gossip about you. The temptation will be to defend yourself, push him away, and seek justice rather than mercy. When you speak with a stubbornly abusive husband, he will seek to abuse you by refusing to respect your opinion, by seeking to talk over you and control you. Your temptation will be to withdraw, to fear him, or to hate him, just like his wife. When you encourage a despondent, suicidal teenager, you will face the dark wall of despair. The temptation will be to lose sight of the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ yourself.
We cannot expect to enter the sinner’s world of sin and come out unscathed; Jesus did not incarnate into our world and pass through unharmed. My friend, we worship a Man who was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief! We follow in the footsteps of the Beloved, who came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. If they have called Christ the devil, how much more will they malign the members of his household! If they persecuted Christ, they will also persecute you. (Is 53:3, Mk 12:30, Mt 10:25, Jn 15:20) What a wonderful Savior we have!
Jesus Christ was sinless and could not sin; yet we are not He. When—not if—you sin against your counselees, humble yourself and seek forgiveness and reconciliation. It may be one of the hardest things for you to do, and yet, one of the most blessed. I often say, “You’re not really friends with someone until you’ve sinned against him and then reconciled”. Let us befriend our counselees and love them supremely by confessing that we are not the Savior. One already bears that title, and He is marvelous indeed. Show them that Jesus Christ is the Savior of both the counselor and the counselee.
Humble, honest, and needy
Thirdly, dear counselor, know this: you must consider yourself among the worst sinners in the world, that you would know your inestimable need for Christ. The apostle Paul took the title of “the foremost of sinners” when he said, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Tim 1:15); we must follow in his humble, honest footsteps.
If I want to be a helpful counselor, in the midst of every counseling session, I must believe that I need biblical counsel as much as anyone else. Perhaps at this moment in time, I don't need formal counseling for an overwhelming issue, but if I really believe that we are all sheep that are prone to wander, that I myself am among the worst sinners, then my ultimate concern will not be "How can I help fix this person?”, but "How can I help this person see that God is his solution, just as He is mine?”
After all, biblical counseling is not “good Christians helping the bad Christians”. As David Powlison says,
… biblical ministry is not, "The healthy treat the sick." Caring well is not, "People who have it all together minister to people who struggle with problems." We are all in this together. It can be sobering to consider your fundamental attitude and stance toward strugglers. Before you initiate any action plan to meet counseling needs, remember that these "counseling needs" are people. A dear brother. A sister for whom Christ died. A human being who struggles, who may have had a rough past, who was presented with few opportunities and many bad options, who made some foolish choices, who has a long way to go. Like you, perhaps. A troubled person is a person to love, not a problem to fix.[1]
Maybe I haven't committed this particular sin. Maybe the Lord has not allowed me to work out my sinfulness in such a spectacular way. Yet, do we not say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I?" Do we not cry out as Paul, "Wretched man that I am!" Counselor, are we not the scum of the earth? Are we not the fools, the weak, the base, the despised, the nobodies, the invisibles? It is because God is wise that we are saved; it is because God is strong that we are His; it is because God loved us even while we were yet despised that we are His. Isn’t He alone our boast? (Ro 1:24, 1 Cor 1:25–29)
Too often I have seen Christians blind to their own neediness and wretchedness — especially myself. In this state, such Christians make poor counselors. Such Christians easily fall into Phariseeism, legalism, and judgmentalism. If I don’t really believe that I am the worst of sinners, eventually I am going to think that this counselee is a worse sinner than me; once I reach that point of hypocrisy, all compassion, patience, and grace towards this person flees from my heart. After all, this counselee is a wretch!
But whose sin do I know more intimately? Theirs, or mine? Oh, may it always be mine! May I always see myself as the greater wretch! Having a right view of my own sin before the cross of Christ helps destroy such selfish pride. The more I see my need for Him, the less I fixate on how others have not honored Him as they ought. The more gracious I can be to others, the better I can help them live glorifying lives for Christ.
I want that for you, my friend. I want you to see your desperate need for the mercy of God and to know that He has abundantly met your need in Jesus Christ. I want to you to be able to weep over the devastation of your counselees’ sins, and yet to cry even more so, “God be merciful to me, the sinner!” (Lk 18:13). I want you to walk with a prayerful limp, not a proud swagger, as one bowed down, not one lifted up in pride. God is our sufficiency, our everlasting joy, the Lover of our soul. Prayerful, humble, dependent, needy Christians make the best of counselors.
Enraptured with the glory of Christ
Fourthly, dear counselor, above all else, know this: you yourself must be enraptured with the glory of Jesus Christ. There is no better hope for effectiveness, no better truth that can sustain you to the end, no better protection against your own sin.
I must be specific here; this is not equivalent to "doing well" in the Lord or to being “spiritually mature”. I am not speaking about those who have “mastered” the gospel or who are now considered “godly”. What does that mean, anyway? Are we not all being transformed from one degree of glory to the next, that we might be like Jesus Christ? Have any of us arrived at perfection? (2 Cor 3:18, Php 3:12–16)
Rather, I mean this: if you want to help fellow sinners by providing biblical counsel, you must perpetually believe that the sinfulness of your sin deserves the withering wrath of God; yet Jesus Christ, your precious Savior and only Redeemer, by His death and resurrection has loved you and set you free from slavery unto freedom in the Holy Spirit, to live for the glory of God and put to death the deeds of the flesh. Or, in a much shorter sentence: You must be in awe of the God of the gospel for His grace toward you, the sinner.
Is Jesus still marvelous to you, dear counselor? Or has He become yet another tool in your counselor’s toolbox? Is He merely the means to some nebulous end of Christian maturity, or is He more? Is not true Christian maturity marked by a heart caught up by, enthralled by, completely won by the grace and truth of the Lord Jesus Christ? The Son of God became the Son of Man that sons of men might become sons of God. Friend, let us cherish that above all! To whom shall we go? He has the words of eternal life; He is the resurrection and the life! Christ is the Beloved of all creation, God’s only begotten Son in whom He is well-pleased (Mt 3:17). Is Christ your Beloved? Are you pleased in Him?
We sing with our lips, “My heart is filled with a thousand songs, proclaiming the glories of Calvary!” We sing, “O the wonderful cross!” We sing, “My Jesus I love Thee, I know Thou art mine”. Let the words saturate your soul, fill every crevice of your heart. This Jesus to whom you sing, whom you proclaim, whom you commend in your counsel is your Jesus, too. He is not only the Savior for your counselees; He is the Savior of sinners, even you.
My dear friend, people need to see you loving Christ more than they need your counsel. If you have not plumbed the depths of God’s kindness and found hope even at the bottom of the well of despair, what hope will you give to them? If you have not exulted in the riches of Jesus Christ and seen Him as more worthy than gaining the whole world (Php 3:7–11, Mk 8:36), how will you commend Him? What do we have except Him? If you are not desperate for God, it does not matter how true your counsel, how insightful your comments, how biblical your assignments. If you are not enraptured with Christ, I daresay God will not bless your counsel. Let that warning sink in; God will not bless hypocrites with fruitfulness in His kingdom.
A blessing
As I said before, counseling is brutal work, fraught with dangers and pitfalls as well as joys and triumphs. I hope God uses this brief letter to help you make it to the end, vibrant in faith, a greater lover of Christ because of your own counseling ministry.
For convenience, here are my four points are again:
- If the Lord grants you a long, grace-empowered ministry, you will work with the very worst of society.
- Some of your greatest temptations will come from within counseling.
- You must consider yourself among the worst sinners in the world, that you would know your inestimable need for Christ.
- You yourself must be enraptured with the glory of Jesus Christ.
Just one more thing to say: there is grace for counselors, too. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Christ has defeated sin, death, and the grave forever; He is strong enough to help you, by His Spirit, to counsel well.
Again, I am excited for you and your counseling ministry! May we both persevere until that very last day, full of faith and confidence in our everlasting God. May He keep us both!
I end with this prayer: May the Lord bless you and keep you all your days; may the Lord shine His face upon you and be gracious to You; may He look upon you, and give you peace, revealing the glory of His Beloved Son through His perfect Word day by day, that you would love Him all the more. May He use you, by His Spirit, to help His beloved sheep on the straight and narrow road to Heaven, and bless your counsel that His name be exalted in the church and in all the world!
[1] Powlison, David. “Ten Questions to Ask Before Starting a Counseling Ministry in Your Church”.