Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast I have with me Dr. Keith Palmer. He’s the Senior Associate Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Granbury, Texas. He’s the Director of the Center for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.
He holds degrees from the Master’s Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his most recent degree is a PhD from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s a Fellow and board member with ACBC. He’s an instructor of biblical counseling at the Master’s University, and he’s a chaplain with the Civil Air Patrol, the auxiliary of the United States Air Force. His passion in ministry is shepherding God’s people through the teaching and counseling of the Scriptures. He’s married to Lisa, and together they have been blessed with three children, Alan, Aimee, and Eric.
Keith and his family have been members at Grace Bible since 2002. I will also mention that Keith has written a book, a product of his dissertation, John Newton’s Theology of Suffering and Its Application to Pastoral Care, which we’re going to be talking a lot about today, Keith. So, welcome to the podcast, brother.
Keith Palmer: Thanks, Dale. Always a great joy to be with you.
Dale Johnson: I’m really looking forward to today. What’s interesting is we’re getting ready for our conference coming up in Fort Worth, Texas, October 6th through the 8th: Ancient Paths: Soul Care and Past Places. You know, some people hear the idea, Keith, of history, and they start thinking of musky smells and rigid thought and this sort of thing.
Oddly, this is going to be a very practical time together, and I think your work is demonstrating that, and we’re going to talk about some of that today, just to see the beauty of how practical the Scripture is in all time, place, and cultures, and how important it is for us to apply the Scriptures appropriately in counseling as well today. And we’re going to use our friend John Newton to demonstrate some of that as well. So, first of all, give people sort of a backdrop of who John Newton is to get us started, and why we should listen to somebody’s counsel like John Newton.
Keith Palmer: Yeah, thanks, Dale. Just reminded of Hebrews 13:7, where the writer reminds us to remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the result of their contact, imitate your faith. And obviously, we have people in our lives today that we look to, and then we have brothers and sisters from church history, and that’s why I’m so excited about this conference, because we’re doing what that passage calls us to do, and imitating their faith and learning from their examples. So, Newton—probably most of our listeners know that Newton was the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He was an 18th century hymn writer and pastor.
Maybe people would be less familiar with the fact that he served 43 years as a pastor in two different churches. He wrote over a thousand letters of what we would call pastoral care or counseling. In fact, J.I. Packer, the theologian and writer, says that Newton is perhaps the greatest pastoral letter writer of all time. He was largely sought after for his pastoral counsel. People in Parliament, all the way down to the poor lacemakers in a town called Olney, and everybody in between wanted to go to Newton in that day to answer their spiritual questions as related to challenges of life. So, that’s a little bit about John Newton in terms of who he is.
Dale Johnson: It’s interesting to hear about brothers like that. And as you mentioned, he’s most famous for the hymn “Amazing Grace,” but that certainly wasn’t the sum total of his life. In fact, when you get into the details of his life and the providential experiences that the Lord provided him from growing up and in early life, it’s really amazing to see how the Lord utilized a man like John Newton in a lot of different ways. It is little known to many of us that John Newton was so impactful in the ways in which he wrote his pastoral care letters.
I think what’s significant about that is his maturity in the faith built a reputation that he was a man to seek after for counsel. When people were dealing with troubled souls, burdened souls, he was a man well known for that. First of all, what a great thing to be known for. I think it would be chronological snobbery if we would look at somebody like John Newton and think, well, the things that he was applying at that day with the complexities of human life in that day, you know, they might have been helpful at that time, but they’re not super helpful now. I think that’s a faulty way of thinking about it.
So, let’s bring this forward, Keith, as we think about John Newton himself, the ways in which he wrote the letters. Remember, his counsel was so significant because he’s writing from a distinct backdrop. This backdrop is saturated in the Scriptures, a worldview that sees God as Creator and providential and sovereign over everything, that the world is cursed by sin and that there is legitimate suffering. How do we deal with that in God’s world? He’s bringing that theology to bear, which was why it was such helpful counsel in the reality of the world that we live in now.
So, bring Newton forward for us. How is he helpful as we think about a modern concept of biblical counseling?
Keith Palmer: Well, Newton’s counsel was really driven by the thought that caring for people, what we call biblical counseling today, is just applied theology. We’re taking the things we believe that Scripture teaches about God and people and Christ and salvation and sanctification, and we’re simply applying those doctrines in care and wisdom to the challenges and problems that people face. So, theology very much drove his pastoral care.
So, for example, writing to a person who was suffering, which is a very common situation for Newton, Newton would take the doctrines of God’s sovereignty, His rule over all, and His goodness, that function of His character. He wrote this, that, “afflictions spring not out of the ground, but are fruits and tokens of divine love, no less than His comforts, and that there is a need be whenever for a season He is in that heaviness.” So, you can see how he’s taking the reality of God’s sovereignty and yet His love and goodness, but he’s applying that in a winsome way to somebody who’s in the throes of suffering, to be able to reframe that suffering in light of that theology. I think another way that Newton helps us in biblical counseling is, Newton illustrates how important character is in counseling. It’s one thing to go and have the right answers, but Newton’s life demonstrates that who he was is just as important as what he said and how he counseled.
In fact, William Jay, one of his contemporaries, wrote that, “Newton was the most perfect instance of the spirit and temper of Christianity I ever knew.” His biographer, Richard Cecil, who knew him, Mr. N, as he called him, would “live no longer than he could love” because he was just known for that. One of his biographers, Josiah Bull, wrote, “it was his goodness rather than his greatness that rendered him so especially attractive.”
He goes on to talk about how there were more eminent preachers of his day. Obviously, George Whitefield is there and other big heavyweights of preaching. Yet, people would want to go hear Newton, not so much because he was this great orator, but because he had the ability to enter into the sufferings of his listeners and feel for them and then care for them out of that frame. So, his humility, just giving you an example of this, Newton wrote, “I feel for you a little in the same way as you feel for yourself. I bear a friendly sympathy in your late and sharp and sudden trial. I mourn with that part of you which mourns.”
I’m thinking in biblical counseling, we want to get them to, you know, some hope, some promise in the text of Scripture, and we need to do that. But Newton starts off, you know, really emulating the sympathy of Christ in a text like Hebrews 4, just feeling for them and caring for them. So, I think Newton helps us not with just the theology applied to life and that character matters, but he had this wonderful ability to know what the need of the moment was. So, for example, one illustration might be a perspective on suffering that was needed, not to just say, I’ll pray for you or I feel sorry for you.
As an example of perspective, what’s the need of the moment, he wrote this. He says, “although believers are in a state of discipline,” that meaning training, “for the mortification of sin yet remaining in them, and yet though for the trial and exercise and growth of their faith, it is still needful that they pass through many tribulations.
Yet none of these are strictly and properly penal,” meaning God’s not trying to discipline us or punish us. Listen to this, “they are not the tokens of God’s displeasure, but rather fatherly chastisements, tokens of His love, designed to promote the work of grace in their hearts and to make them partakers of His holiness.” Newton just knew what the need of the moment was and was able to communicate it accordingly.
Dale Johnson: That’s an unbelievable skill of discernment, Keith, when you think about it.
First of all, he speaks to his maturity in understanding the Scripture. But second, it actually speaks to the wealth of the treasures that Scripture provides, what I typically call the dynamics of the Bible, and not a one-size-fits-all approach, right? When somebody’s dealing with issues and pressures of life, the Bible is dynamic in how it responds to people, and then having the ability to discern and know how to apply it appropriately in the need of the moment. I want to go back to the first issue that you mentioned. I don’t think we talk about that enough, Keith.
The issue of character is that we do a lot of training today; training is very abundant. People can fill their heads full of knowledge. I teach at a seminary. You teach at a Christian higher education as well. So, we see this all the time, where people are coming in, they’re getting their head full of all sorts of things. I think that’s important; I think it’s important that we learn information, we learn knowledge, we gain knowledge by discipline of study of Scripture. But also, one of the things that I tell my students that I think is most important is, what makes you a solid counselor is that the Word has been applied to you first.
First of all, that does so many things. It gives you confidence in the Word, but it also helps you to see that if the Word can change you, it can change any person. That level of character, it does alter something in you in the counseling room in the way that you see another person in their difficulty, in their suffering, in their sin, and being able to respond appropriately to the need of the moment.
So, I think even that alone from Newton as a model, as an example, should be something that we would emulate. So, I want to make sure that we highlight that particular part. You can already see how practical these things are from somebody like Newton, and we’re going to be talking a lot more about this at our conference coming up.
There’s one final question that I think is important. When we think about pastoral care, every single approach to counseling has a framework. Every single approach to seeking a solution or trying to understand the problem that a person has. Every single approach to counseling has sort of a backdrop of how to discern what we think is wrong, a framing, if you will. Newton certainly had that.
We try to develop that in biblical counseling. We try to build a biblical view of people in the world. Talk about the factors that really informed Newton’s pastoral care. What I mean by that is the backdrop of what he was seeing through in order to have discernment, in order to apply biblical truths appropriately. So, talk about some of those factors that informed his pastoral care.
Keith Palmer: I think first of all, his own story, his own biography. If you read his autobiography, and probably our listeners are somewhat familiar with his wild childhood and his career as a slave ship captain and how God rescued him and began to work the means of grace in his heart through a storm where he almost died. As Newton looked back on his life, not only was he reading about, for example, the sovereignty of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God in Scripture, but he could see that actually at work in his own story. Preserved from dying multiple times, seeing God’s patience and mercy as he rebelled further and further from the faith of Christianity that his mother had taught him as a child.
Newton believed what he believed about God and Scripture and Christ and salvation, certainly because he sought in the text, and God’s sufficient authoritative Word is convincing. He also was shaped by what they called in that day experimental theology. We would call it experiential theology today, and the Puritans used that term. It was the idea that Newton took what he saw in Scripture, and he had to work it out in his own life. He could look backward and see God doing what He said He is and does in the text. He could see that in his own life. So, we need to be those that not only believe what the Bible says, but we need to be able to say that I’ve had to put this into practice, or I’ve seen God work this out in my life. So experiential theology, experimental theology, would be a big shaping factor.
I mentioned also, secondly, his theology of suffering was a huge factor in what drove and informed his biblical counseling. I’m going to talk a little bit about his ministry to William Cooper at our conference that you mentioned. One of things I love about that story is that Newton did not abandon his theology in a “hard case,” like in the case of William Cooper’s depression and suicide attempts. He pressed into his theology even more, and he trusted that God would do and be what God claims to do and who He claims to be. So those are two things that come in mind. I mean, certainly as well, just we mentioned his character. We mentioned some other things that really informed his biblical counseling.
One last thing would be whether it was a poor person, little to no education in his community there where his first church was, or if he’s talking to William Wilberforce, who was a member of Parliament, that it was the same character, the same theology, the same doctrinal convictions that he applied in wisdom, knowing what was needed, but he didn’t change his message depending on who he was talking to. There was a consistency there because he really believed that the Bible applied to life, and love and wisdom was the way to care for people.
Dale Johnson: That’s so excellent, honestly, and so encouraging. And our ability to be able to do that because the Bible is written that way, where God desires to be known, and he has revealed himself in His Word, and we have the ability to minister it to whoever the Lord presents to us. What a great model, and I’m looking forward to hearing more on that message as we get to our conference. Again, I’ll remind listeners, it is October 6th through the 8th in Fort Worth, Texas, Ancient Paths: Soul Care in Past Places, and it will be really important. You can go to our website and find out more about that. I’ll tell you some more about that as we finish.
One thing that you said, Keith, I think is really critical. When you talk about experimental theology, you described it how we would say it, “experiential theology.” That’s a thought from the past that is brought forward in different language. Jay Adams talks about this in terms of habit. I was just reading him the other day on the concept of change and how change happens, and obviously the spirit by the Word accomplishes change. The way Dr. Adams mentions this is in terms of habit. Simply obeying what the Scripture calls us to, whether we feel like it or not. We’re a people in our modern culture that are so driven by emotion, and we think change only happens if we feel it in our heart. When in reality, I think one of the things that Dr. Adams was bringing forward from people, maybe not directly, but people like Newton, you see this consistency of what the Bible calls us to, to experientially walk through, taste and see that the Lord is good. He’s called us to do this, taste it and see it. What you see is that change starts to take place. Anyway, just an interesting connection as you’re talking through that.
I’m looking forward to this time together as we see the practicality, the beauty of the Scripture played out in time and spaces of the past, how relevant, unbelievably relevant we’re going to see it is for our day and time to apply those same Scriptures to the same types of problems that we face in human life as well.
