The following is a transcript from a talk that Dr. Heath Lambert gave at a colloquium that ACBC held in 2016.
I want to say a few words of introduction before I get into my topic. First of all about this colloquium and what we are doing here; it is going to be best if you understand who ACBC is and what we do for you to really know what is going on at this colloquium. Again, many of you are very familiar with ACBC and have been long time members; some of you were there when ACBC started when it was called NANC. Others of you are not familiar and so I just want to let you know a little bit of how we got here today.
ACBC is 40 years old; we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. We were started in 1976, actually, by the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. Jay Adams started CCEF as a training center and then the board of CCEF believed that if this was going to be a legitimate movement – the biblical counseling movement – we needed an independent certifying body. So the board of CCEF created the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors. At that time, they drafted a Standards of Conduct which was the ethical guiding document for those of us in the biblical counseling movement. That document really has not been touched over the last 40 years. The board of ACBC, a little more than two years ago, agreed unanimously that that needed to be worked over. It needed to be reviewed and to go completely back down to the studs. So, we are in the midst of a two year process of overhauling that document and trying to bring it up to date.
That’s where you come in. We want to receive feedback. Some of the comments that we heard from several people on our board as we were working on this was that it would be a great idea for us to hear from people outside of our organization about what should and should not be in this document. You are here for that reason. You are also here because even though ACBC is a membership organization – we are primarily concerned with our membership and with certification of our training centers and our members – we also want to be a participant in the conversation that is happening in the larger counseling world.
So, the two goals of these days together are really first and foremost that we would be able to grow in relationship with one another; that we would be able to hear from others both in formal presentations and at meal times. Then also that you would help us have a guiding document in terms of ethical standards that is as strong and as biblically faithful as it can be. So you are here, whether you know it or not, in service of ACBC and I want to thank you. We appreciate your service, time, and help as we think through a document that we hope is going to be really important over the future of our organization.
Next, by way of introduction, let me say a word about who is here. We tried to get representatives from most of the major biblical counseling organizations and for the most part everybody that we really wanted to be here is here. There are a few people that had to back out at the last minute because of some conflicts, but we are really really glad to have people from the Biblical Counseling Coalition, the Association of Biblical Counselors, the International Association of Biblical Counselors, Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, and most of the seminaries that are committed to biblical counseling have representatives here. This is really a great group of leaders, of executive directors, of vice presidents, of professors, of pastors, and of medical professionals. It is really an amazing group of those of you that are here. In fact we were talking last night, going over the list of who would be coming and somebody on the ACBC staff said, “This is really a big deal to have these people in this room.” and I said, “It is a big deal.” So I am kind of a dweeb when it comes to the biblical counseling movement, and I have read with some of you some of the history of these kinds of gatherings in the biblical counseling movement where there has been a truly mixed-up group of people in the room and there has only been about four or five of those meetings. So, it is really unique in the life of the biblical counseling movement to have this group of people here and I am really thankful that, again, you took your time to be with us.
I want to mention a word about our speakers that are here. I won’t introduce them, you have in your guidebook their information on the second page so I won’t repeat that information. However, I will just mention who is here and why I wanted them to be here. We will be hearing a little later from Dr. Ed Welch; I am so glad Dr. Welch is here. I wanted Dr. Welch to be here because he is someone who is deeply committed to biblical counseling. He is someone who has been involved in the practice and the teaching of biblical counseling for decades and in terms of just authors in the biblical counseling movement you’d be hard pressed to come up with somebody who is more well-known and more respected than Dr. Welch. We are really glad you are here and are looking forward to hearing from you.
Dr. Garrett Higbee; Dr. Higbee is here because he is the Executive Director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. The Biblical Counseling Coalition has been a move on the part of folks in the biblical counseling movement to try to get all of the different groups in biblical counseling together and building relationship and working towards a common goal. I will tell you, Garrett has been a friend; I think I met you when you first started teaching adjunctly at Southern back when you were at Twelve Stones. He is now a pastor supervising biblical counseling at a very large church, a mega church with multi campuses. Another fascinating thing about Garrett – and this is true of Dr. Welch as well – is that their training is in psychology and psychiatry. To come from that and then have commitments as biblical counselors; we are really excited to hear from you and glad that you are here.
Dr. Charlie Hodges, so glad Dr. Hodges is here. He is a medical doctor, board certified, practicing for decades and is also a member of ACBC and a candidate for Fellow; finishing that up sometime soon. At ACBC we are really encouraged that we have a good group in our membership of people who are board certified medical doctors. I am very thankful that we are able to use their expertise in our training of counselors and in speaking on counseling and medical issues. Any of them – some of them are in this room – could have spoken here. I wanted Charlie to speak because his book, Good Mood, Bad Mood, is so important dealing with bi-polar and a biblical approach to that which is so helpful. I am very thankful that you are here and looking forward to having you help us understand medical issues as they relate to biblical counseling ethics.
Lastly, I will put Dr. Mark McMinn and Dr. Mark Yarhouse together. These are our brothers in Christ that I wanted to come because they do not identify themselves as biblical counselors. They identify themselves as integrationists. In my mind – I told them this last night at dinner – that if you asked me to name the five leading scholars in the integration world, Dr. McMinn and Dr. Yarhouse would be on that list. They appear to me to be doing very cutting edge work in their field, and they have things to say that we need to hear. I said to them last night at dinner, “Look, there is nobody that has more courage to show up at this meeting than you guys.” I am really grateful and in fact I said that I am making up my request for them to come be in the minority in the room by being the minority at dinner last night. So I was all by myself at dinner and it is just the two of them in here today; turnabout is fair play.
I am so eager to hear what they have to say. I told them that the thing that I think is important that we say together – it is important that those of us who are in the biblical counseling world who have all the convictions that we share and that we should have – it is good that we get together and say that the thing that is most important is the thing that we share in common; our unity with the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I am so thankful to have brothers in Christ that look at things from a different perspective than us that are going to come and be honest with us. I am looking forward to asking them honest questions and hearing their honest feedback. Dr. McMinn and Dr. Yarhouse, we are very very grateful that you have joined us and so appreciative of your involvement. Thank you.
Alright, I think that is it by way of introduction which I hope doesn’t ensure that I don’t have time to get through everything that I wanted to say in my presentation. I observed the same freedom that I gave to everyone else and will be talking about an issue in counseling ethics that probably is the most near and dear to my heart. I am not going to argue that it is the most important issue in counseling ethics, although I think it would be on the short list, but it is certainly the issue that is most near and dear to my heart. It is the issue of the proclamation of the gospel as the foundation of counseling.
I think that whether we speak of Jesus in counseling is a matter of counseling ethics. As I have thought about talking about this issue, I have been aware that there has been apprehension as I approach the topic in a room like this. I have felt strange selecting this topic. I wanted to do it; I told all the presenters to talk about what they wanted to talk about, to talk about what they care about the most. That will help us understand a lot when we hear something that they are really excited about. What I am really excited about is this issue of the proclamation of the gospel in counseling, yet, I feel weird talking about it in this room; using weird there as a technical term.
I was trying to figure out why I feel strange talking about that topic in this room. The reason, I realized, even as lately as this week, is because even in this room – this room is not monolithic – even amongst those who would say, ‘I am in the biblical counseling world,’ many of us are in different places when it comes to biblical counseling. There is a true spectrum. It is not like there is the group of biblical counselors, and then integrationists; there is a spectrum in the room and where that spectrum is sort of highlights my feeling of strangeness as I talk about this issue.
My guess is that there are some people in this room as I talk about my passion for sharing the gospel in the counseling context, there is going to be some of you going, ‘Well what is the big deal? I do that all the time. We are there. Why are we talking about this?’ Then I imagine there are some of you that have questions about whether that sounds a little too fundamentalist, a little too Southern Baptist, a little too pastoral. Then there are maybe some of you that wonder, ‘Well why would we ever do that? There are other ethical guidelines that rule that out.’ So I am speaking to an issue where I suspect there is not homogeneity in this room. But, I am going to take a crack at it because I am really passionate about this topic and because I really think the issue needs to be discussed. It doesn’t need to be discussed because I am passionate about it; it needs to be discussed because if the Standards of Conduct that our committee is getting ready to recommend to the board are approved by the board and then approved by the membership, then we are going to have an ethical standard that will say the following. There are two portions in our proposed Standard that are relevant to this issue. The first are in articles 2A and B; I am just going to read them. Under the commitment to Jesus, it says,
Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who has come in the flesh to redeem fallen humanity from all their troubles through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension to the throne at the right hand of the Father. He is the source of eternal joy and serves as the ultimate resolution for every counseling problem. He intends to do away with all counseling difficulties powerfully, though partially in this life, and then fully in the next. All people access these benefits through faith in him as they begin and continue to live the Christian life. It is the privilege of all Christians to use our conversations to direct all peoples to him at all times and in all places. Jesus is the goal of all our conversations, whether informal or formal.
1. Biblical counselors must point their counselees to the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ unto salvation. Because Jesus Christ serves as the personal solution to all of our counseling difficulties, the primary goal of every counselor should be to introduce counselees to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Faithful counselors will pray for wisdom about the best way to call their counselees to saving faith in Christ, knowing that it is only through a relationship with him that troubled people can know joy now and throughout eternity.
2. Biblical counselors must also point their counselees to the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ unto sanctification. Faith in Jesus Christ is essential, not only to enter the Christian life, but also to grow in holiness throughout life. Biblical counselors point their believing counselees to the person and work of Christ as that which makes it possible for them to live the life of faith as they await the fullness of their salvation at the last day.
Those are articles 2A and B; that is the first relevant section. The second one is article 8A. This is under the commitment to methodology; so this is the practice of counseling. Here is what we are going to propose:
Wise counseling requires a commitment to understanding and following the change process as it is revealed in Scripture. Counseling is about offering help to people as they make Spirit-initiated changes in their lives that honor him, and so biblical counselors must know that biblical process and be committed to following it if they are to succeed in their work of counseling. The Bible is a sufficient resource, which explains the processes necessary in the counseling relationship.
1. Biblical counselors must be committed to the truth that the fundamental key to the process of biblical counseling is the person and work of Jesus Christ. We do not point counselees to follow a process of growth before pointing them to follow the person of Jesus Christ. Biblical counselors work to point all persons to repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ to find forgiveness for their sin and comfort in their pain.
So that’s a lengthy quote, but those are the relevant portions that are certainly a reflection of my passion that this is an ethical issue. But that statement needs a defense. It needs a defense because it is unusual; it is an unusual thing to have in an ethical document. To our knowledge, if this gets approved in anything like the language I have presented, we will be the only counseling organization with an ethical guideline that makes it unethical to not point counselees to Jesus. That is very different. More typical ethical statements are statements like the one from AACC and their ethical standard 1-310. They say,
Christian counselors secure client consent for all counseling and related services prior to the initiation of care or services. This includes the video/audio-taping of client sessions, the use of supervisory and consultative help, the application of special procedures and evaluations, and the communication of client data with other professionals and institutions. Counselors take care that: (1) the client has the capacity to give consent; (2) that counseling has been discussed together with the client and that the client reasonably understands the nature and process of counseling; the costs, time, and work required; the limits of counseling; and any appropriate alternatives; and (3) the client freely gives consent to counseling, without coercion or undue influence.
CAPS says, in section 4.1 A and B of their Statement of Ethical Guidelines,
1. CAPS members obtain informed consent for services as early as possible in the treatment process and continue to remain sensitive to issues requiring informed consent as treatment proceeds. Informed consent includes explanation of the nature and anticipated course of therapy, fees, involvement of third parties, and limits of confidentiality. Care is taken to allow patients to ask questions and receive answers in order to best assure that they understand the nature of treatment.
2. In proposing treatment for which established techniques and procedures have not been developed, CAPS members inform clients of the novel nature of the treatment, possible risks involved, alternative treatments, and assure that participation is voluntary. Included among the aforementioned treatments are some explicitly Christian interventions. With all explicitly Christian treatments, CAPS members respect the client’s autonomy in choosing whether to participate in a particular treatment and are sensitive to the fact that not all clients will be receptive to these interventions.
So those are a couple of more typical statements. Those statements are different than the proposed ACBC statement in, by my count, two ways. First, they make spiritual interventions, such as a proclamation of the gospel, allowed but not required. The second way they are different is that you must obtain consent prior to doing it. The ACBC standard will make the proclamation of the gospel to counselees required and would not require the obtaining of consent before doing it. So you have got to have a defense for that; that is very different.
But I also want to offer more than a defense. In fact, what I really want to do is an appeal to all Christians in the counseling world; biblical, Christian, integration, Christian psychology, transformational psychology, levels of explanation, whatever. I want to offer an appeal that this would be an issue that would unite all professors of Jesus Christ; all Christians who practice counseling. I am praying that this would be an issue that would unite us. As I make the case, I want to try to explain why I hope that is going to happen.
I think all of us need to grow in this area. I think biblical counselors, Christian counselors, Christian psychologists need to grow in our faithfulness of speaking of Jesus. I am truly not speaking to one group; I think all of us have areas where we need to change.
So let me make the case here and try to do it with enough time to leave for questions and interactions.
The case begins with the authority of Scripture. Ethics – what is right and what is wrong – are biblically determined. Something is ultimately right or wrong because God says it is right or wrong and He has revealed what is right or wrong to us in the Bible. Behavior is ethical or not ultimately when it is biblical. All of us agree with that and I am going to quote a few more guiding documents from some of the organizations in the room. ACBC, in our Standards of Doctrine, this is what we say about the authority of Scripture:
The 66 books of the Bible in the Old and New Testaments constitute the completed and inscripturated Word of God. God the Holy Spirit carried along the human authors of Scripture so that they wrote the exact words that he desired them to write. The words in Scripture penned by human authors are thus the very words of God himself. As inspired by God the Bible is completely free from error, and serves as the inerrant, infallible, and final rule for life and faith. The Bible speaks with complete authority about every matter it addresses.
The Biblical Counseling Coalition, their confessional statement says, “We believe that God’s Word is authoritative, sufficient, and relevant…”
AACC, their first foundation for their ethical standard says,
Jesus Christ, in His revelation in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, is the preeminent model for Christian counseling practice ethics, caregiving activities, and the final authority for all matters about which it speaks.
We all agree on this. There is not a guiding document that I am aware of in the counseling world for Christians that says anything other than the Bible is our authority.
So I want to try to make a case that the Bible, as our authority, requires a certain kind of ethical behavior when it talks about our need to share our faith in Jesus; to share the truth of Jesus. That ethical need is that it is required.
Here is the argument that I want to make; it is three sentences. The Bible requires Christians to use our conversations to point all people – both believers and unbelievers – to Jesus Christ. This requirement applies to all conversations, whether they are formal counseling conversations or informal conversations (we are not just talking about fee for hire, we are talking about in the backyard with your neighbor). This biblical requirement means that all counselors are ethically required, with wisdom, grace, and care, to point people to Christ in their counseling conversations. That is the case I want to try to make.
Before I can make the case I have to do one other thing; we have got to define the gospel. Before we can point counselees to the gospel, we’ve got to know what the gospel is and this is an area where I think biblical counselors in particular could stand to change a little bit. I think it has become easy in about the last decade or so for biblical counselors – not just biblical counselors but many in evangelicalism – to use ‘the gospel’ as a term as kind of a cliché. It has become a word or an idea that gets tossed around. In many ways it has been, as I listened to so many and read so many, a word that has become emptied of meaning and has kind of become a form of jargon. “The gospel this…” “The gospel that…” We love the gospel, but what is it? What is the content of this idea, “the gospel?” If it doesn’t have definite content then it will become a word we use and then it will be useless before long.
So, here is what I think the gospel is, I am going to try to back this up with the Bible. The gospel is the proclamation – proclamation is important; almost every time the term gospel is used in the New Testament it is used with regards to a proclamation, with a word that is spoken. The gospel is the proclamation of the benefits that Jesus Christ has secured for his people who come to him by faith. The gospel is the proclamation of the benefits that Jesus Christ has secured for his people who come to him by faith. So this is my summary then of the gospel; there is the work of Jesus Christ and there are the benefits for his people.
Here is the work of Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. In Romans 5:19 it says, “For as by the one man’s disobedience [speaking of Adam] the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” This is a statement that Jesus Christ in his life was perfect; he never sinned. We know this from places like Hebrews chapter 4. In his life he was sinless; Jesus lived a perfect life. That is the first element we can summarize about the gospel as it relates to the work of Jesus Christ.
Second, Jesus died a brutal death. In a passage like 1 Peter 2:24 it says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” So Jesus’ perfect life earns for Him the ability to be pinned to the cross and bear the sins of every guilty person who would believe. Jesus lived a perfect life, he died a brutal death, and then he rose and ascended to heaven; resurrection and ascension. If you look in Ephesians 1:19-22, Paul is praying that we would know,
…what is the immeasurable greatness of his [God’s] power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
This is a statement of the power of God at work in Jesus to lift him off of the ground through the heavens and install Him on a throne as King of kings and Lord of lords; resurrected and ascended. Jesus lived a perfect life, he died a brutal death, and he rose from the grave and ascended into heaven where He reigns this moment as King of kings and Lord of lords.
All of that is a summary of the work of Jesus Christ. But then there are the benefits for his people. I want to talk about three benefits for his people.
The first benefit is forgiveness. Ephesians 1:7 says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace…” Because Jesus lived, died, and rose we are forgiven for our sins.
The second benefit is that we have power. We have power to live the Christian life and power to be obedient. Romans 6:1-4 says,
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Jesus lived, died, rose and as you are in him you can walk in newness of life; you have power to obey the commands of God.
Then the third benefit is comfort and hope. 1 Peter 1:3-7 says,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This is a text that teaches us that we have comfort now in the midst of our pain because we have hope on the other side of the pain. There is no promise in the Bible that we are offered ease and comfort in our life now, but in fact, there is a promise that there will be trouble, pain, and refinement. However, on the other side of that you have hope, and because of that hope you have comfort. We minister comfort to people and that comfort comes because of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
All of those benefits are obtained through faith; “guarded through faith.” We come to believe these things and when we believe these things; when we believe that Jesus is who he said he is, and did what he did, and we believe that he sends these benefits to us – when we believe it – they are ours. That is the gospel. I think that is what we need to talk about. I think that is what we are required to talk about in our counseling conversations; not perhaps as just a repeat of that summary, but that summary would be in our bloodstream. So when we speak it is what comes out.
Now, I want to talk about five reasons why we should use our counseling conversations – why we should be ethically required to use our counseling conversations – to point people to the gospel. Here is the first reason:
1. First of all the command of Jesus Christ; so that’s a big one. Matthew 28, one of the most famous passages in the Bible, Matthew 28:18-20 says, “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.'”
This is the Great Commission and it comes to us in two parts; there is an evangelistic element of the Great Commission and there is a discipleship element in the Great Commission. Both are required. We as Christians are called to go and do our part to bring people into the faith and do our part to build them up in the faith. We find out that these are really Jesus’ last words. This is right before his ascension. We tend to impart particular weight to the last things people say to us. When we know someone that died we want to hear the last thing they said; that tends to reflect importance. Jesus, the last job he gave his gathered disciples was, ‘go tell others about me and build them up in the faith.’ So we have the command of Jesus Christ. I would say that Jesus Christ, here, does not give us the option to decide whether we will speak of him, but he lays that on us as a duty.
2. Second, the example of the apostles. There are so many places where we could see this but just look at one in 1 Corinthians 2:1-2, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
Now we know, you keep reading the Corinthian correspondence, and you know that the apostle Paul said all kinds of things to the Corinthians. He didn’t just say, “Well, you know, Jesus was crucified for ya right? Don’t you know? We will talk about marriage later; you know Jesus was crucified for you, don’t you?” Paul talked about all kinds of things but here he is saying what informed all of that; what filled out all of his instruction was, “I didn’t want to know anything but Jesus Christ and him crucified.” If we want to follow in the apostle Paul’s footsteps as he tells us to do on three occasions in the New Testament he says, ‘when I am following Jesus you follow me,’ then we should do likewise. We should want to follow the example of the apostle in this regard.
3. Third reason; the gospel as I summarized it is the foundation for all change that matters. These next three issues are going start to get important because we have got Jesus and the apostle Paul and we might say, “Well, I am not Jesus. I am not the apostle Paul. I don’t even work for a church; I don’t consider myself to be a minister.” Or “I don’t consider myself to have an evangelism ministry. I am not a missionary, etc.” Each of these three areas are going to begin to inform then wherever we are and however we serve.
The foundation for all change is this gospel that I have summarized. Now, let me be clear and precise about that statement; people can change without belief in the gospel. The best example I always use of this is my mother who was a drunk for fifteen years. She changed through some diligent work of some people in alcoholics anonymous. She quit drinking, and I am thankful she quit drinking. She was promiscuous and couldn’t hold down a job and we never had any money. When she got sober in many ways things got better; she was also still as mean as a snake, honestly, I am just telling you. I had two brothers that wished she’d start drinking again because at least she passed out sometimes. My oldest brother said that; “at least she was passed out when she was drunk.”
She changed, she sobered up, but it was thirteen years after she sobered up when she came to believe the gospel that she became different in a way that honored Christ. She was kind and warm and we could trust her with our kids. She gave us hugs, kisses, prayed for us and called and said, “I was just at this church here this morning that you told me to go to and I don’t think the sermon that pastor preached was biblical.” I am thinking, this woman beat me with a mop handle and she is sitting here critiquing a sermon – and she was right! The pastor blew Romans 8. My one year converted Mom figured it out. Is it possible to get other kinds of change? Absolutely! But when we want the kind of change that honors Christ then it takes the work of Christ; it takes the gospel.
2 Peter 1 has been placed into service by many in the biblical counseling movement, but I want to use it a little bit differently this morning. 2 Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” Now when biblical counselors usually talk about that text they want to defend the sufficiency of Scripture for counseling, I am ready to go there but that is not my point this morning. My point this morning is something much less controversial about the text and is that sinful desire is combated and eradicated through the power of Jesus that is unleashed in the proclamation of the gospel.
4. Here is a fourth reason why it should be unethical not to name Christ; the eternal consequences of separation from God. I was reviewing a text in Matthew 25 last night, and was haunted by it. We see in Matthew 25, another well known passage, the separation of the sheep from the goats. This is what Jesus tells us in Matthew 25:41-46, “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
I look around this room and I see men and women who are helping and who have helped hundreds, thousands of people with all manner of their problems in living. We know how to resolve conflict, how to help people improve in their communication, improve in their sex life, or how to give strategies to decrease worry, and all of that is wonderful; I don’t want us to do any less of that. As much as we should be concerned about those realities as counselors, we should at least – if we are in this because we love people – we should at least be concerned about caring for our counselees and saying things to them that will matter a billion years from now.
5. Finally, the overflow of our hearts, Matthew 12:33-34, “‘Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.'” Jesus is saying that our words are the overflow of what is stored up in our hearts. When you are speaking you are speaking about what is coming out of you. This truth is related to this issue because we should be so captivated and enamored and obsessed with who Jesus is and what he has done for us that we can’t but speak about it.
I think this is important for those of us in the biblical counseling world; this and in a particular the foundation for all change. It is easy – I have seen it – I have supervised a lot of counseling students and it is easy for people who love the Bible, who want to talk about the Bible to do biblical counseling in a way that I don’t think is biblical counseling. And it is this: I give you verses. So we talk about a verse. There are verses in the Bible that say, ‘quit doing this and start doing that.’ You talk about those verses – and I am for those verses – but when you read those verses in context they always come in the context of who Jesus is and what he has done.
So you can stop doing these things and start doing these other things because Jesus is not dead anymore. So as biblical counselors, we need to watch that we don’t have a proof text after a sentence we make that doesn’t come in the larger biblical category of talking about Jesus. As I heard somebody say about a different matter, ‘we can get the lyrics but not have the tune.’ We need to be careful. This points to our own devotion for Jesus; if we can speak to somebody about how to strategize over a difficulty they are having and Jesus doesn’t just pop out, then I think we should not just be in ethical trouble, I think we should repent.
Now, there are some problems with this and I am not going to try to cover all of them. There are several that I want to unpack. As the clock is ticking, I will just fly through a few and then camp out on one.
One problem is the consequence problem. So there are consequences to signing yourself up for this kind of ethical standard because there are other ethical codes that are at odds with this ethical code and it will place you at odds with those other ethical codes. There will be groups with whom you can’t participate. There are going to be organizations you can’t engage. Those kinds of conflicts are not the kinds of conflicts that any of us want, they are not the kinds of conflicts that any of us desire, and they are the kind of conflicts that Christians have had to figure out for a couple millennia now. The apostle Paul says, ‘Hey, am I trying to please man or am I trying to please God?’ We can’t unpack all that right now, maybe it will come up in the questions.
Another problem is the effectiveness problem. So if I sign up for this and if I remove myself from ethical standards that are at odds with that, then I am going to eliminate myself from a whole constituency that might benefit from my help. I am not going to have access to them because I have closed myself off. A lot to say about that, I get it; I feel the weight of it.
Almost all of my counseling has been in the context of the local church and I am aware that there are people that I would like to help that don’t even think to come to me for help because I am at a church and not somewhere else; I get it. But really, this is true of all the decisions we make. If you make a decision to live in a certain area you close yourself off from the people that don’t live there. If you make a decision to work at a particular place, you close yourself off from other places of work. If you make a decision to wear a certain kind of clothes people say, “Well I don’t want that guy or that girl.” What we have to do in all of life is we have to make a principle decision, trust the Lord, and live with the consequences. More to say about that but I won’t say anything else about it.
Another problem is the rigidity problem. The rigidity problem would be like, “Really? In every conversation you have to say something about Jesus? Really?” So what does that look like? Like am I going to sit there and say, “Well hey, listen, I want to ask you what you had for lunch but let me tell you about the work of Jesus Christ and the benefits he has secured for you”? That’s the rigidity problem and I don’t think it’s a true problem. I think phrased like I just said it is an overly wooden, awkward way to interact. I would say that in light of these five categories that I have just talked about, particularly the eternal consequences, I do think it is a better problem to have than the problem of not mentioning Jesus at all. So if we have to pick I would pick that one, but I don’t think we have to pick.
The reality is I would refine this by saying not every single conversation has to be about Jesus, but every single relationship should be. And so that means we are looking for opportunities. I think about this and I think about a conversation I had with my next door neighbor. We’ve just moved into this new neighborhood and we are praying for our neighbors to come and know Jesus. We believe God has placed us in that neighborhood so that we can point them to Him; we are trying to make brownies for people and have them over for cookouts so that we can introduce them to Jesus Christ.
I was talking to this guy that is next door to me, he was working in his garage yesterday and I walked over there and I did not say, “Hi, I am Heath Lambert, Pastor and Biblical Counselor, and you are going to go to hell if you don’t repent right now.” I talked to him and asked what he was working on. He was painting; he paints flower pots and they look really good. Actually, I am going to get one from him. He is painting these flower pots and I was getting to know him and then he asked me what I did and he expressed some interest. Then my kid came running out in his underwear and I had to go take care of that; that is where that ended. We are working on it. That is why I am really thankful that our ethical standard says we have got to know how to do this with wisdom and grace; we are going to pray for wisdom about how to do this.
I had several conversations with some of you yesterday, some of those conversations we talked about Jesus and how he is changing us and how we are growing. Others of us, we didn’t have those conversations but the environment is there and nobody is running from it and the relationship is geared in that way. I think the wooden-ness – the rigidity problem – has more to do with our care, our sensitivity, and our wisdom as we engage people not whether every single conversation is directly about Jesus Christ.
Here is the main problem I want to deal with, just for the next few moments, it is the coercion problem. We want to be careful – we should want to be careful – to avoid coercing people. A faith that is coerced is not faith, it is coercion. We particularly need to be mindful of this when people are coming for counseling and they are in a particularly weakened state. They might be more sensitive to our suggestions and saying things not because they believe them but because we are there and that kind of thing. We should want to avoid coercion and I think there are a few biblical themes that help us to avoid that.
The first biblical theme is the biblical teaching that faith is between God and the person who must believe. Romans 3:21-23, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Faith is – Ephesians 2 calls it a gift from God – a matter between God and the person. It is our job to point people to faith in Jesus Christ; it is not our job to create faith in Jesus Christ. When we really believe that biblical teaching, it will work against any coercive effort on our part.
Here is a second response; the biblical teaching that Christians are always to speak graciously and kindly. So, Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” I love the way he says that. If you are always speaking graciously, if you always do that, if that is your practice, then you will know how you ought to speak. When you always answer graciously, you will know how to do it. All of our speech is gracious because all of our speech is practice for all of our speech. We should be gracious when we want to speak graciously and kindly; there won’t be a rude desire to enforce our beliefs on someone in a heavy handed way.
And then third is the example of Jesus. Mark 10:17-23,
“And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
I remember reading this my first year in seminary, there was a book that I had been reading about evangelism and I wondered if the author of that book had ever read this text. I think some people are so zealous for evangelism they would have recommended that Jesus stopped the guy and said, “Well don’t sell everything, just make it half. You don’t have to sell the whole thing, how about 25 percent?” just to get any kind of response. I was struck that Jesus let this man walk away. He said, ‘here is what is required; you have got the law, you have got the words, but you don’t have me. Come after me, and then you will be good.’ He couldn’t do it, and Jesus couldn’t compromise. So he said, “ok.”
The example of Jesus here is not just that he let him walk away as we should; we are not trying to argue with anybody, we are not trying to be mean-spirited. His example is also one of love; he looked at him and loved him. He said, ‘you just lack one thing, go give the whole thing away and come after me.’ The guy couldn’t do it; he walked away. When we love people like this and give people this reckless kind of responsibility to walk away, that will also work against coercion.
Those are a few problems. There are many more things that we could say, but perhaps I’ll end all of that by repeating my case: the Bible requires Christians to use our conversations to point all people – both believers and unbelievers – to Jesus Christ. This requirement applies to all of our conversations whether they are formal counseling conversations or informal conversations. This biblical requirement means that all counselors are ethically required, with wisdom, grace, and care, to point people to Christ in their counseling conversations.
