Dale Johnson: I am so delighted with the guest that I have for today, his name is Omri Miles. He serves as a lead pastor of Grace Bible Church in New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Expositor Seminary and a Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling from the Master’s University.
He’s been certified with ACBC since 2018. He spent more than 15 years in Tempe, Arizona, training for ministry until he was sent to plant a church in New Orleans East, which is where he now lives with his wife Emily and their five children. For many of you, last year at our annual conference was an introduction to our brother, Omri. I’m so glad he’s with us today, and we’re going to talk about this issue of God-glorifying change. Omri, welcome to the podcast.
Omri Miles: Thanks, Dale.
Dale Johnson: Now, what a critical subject as we talk about God-honoring change—this concept really that the Bible describes as sanctification or being sanctified. And so many ways in which we think about this in biblical counseling. In fact, genuine God-honoring pastoral care really focuses and hones-in-on this concept of what it means to pursue change that’s honoring to God.
Omri, I have to be honest with you. There are so many ways in which counseling in more of a professional-type setting or pursuit is drifting away from this concept. Even Christian counseling, historically with integration, and now with clinically-informed styles of biblical counseling, these concepts are being compromised to some degree.
Whether they’re intended or not, the result is we begin to drift away from some of the concepts of genuine God-honoring change—limiting what we’re approaching, how we approach a person, so that we can help a person understand their life in relation to God, to honor Him.
I want you to just open up talking a little bit about this concept of God-honoring change, why it’s so important, why I would consider it to be a fundamental tenet of biblical counseling is that we pursue sanctification. That’s what we do as ministers of the Word, both publicly, in your case, when you’re preaching on a Sunday, but then also privately as we minister the Word. We can’t forget that concept. Talk a little bit about this important topic, this key tenet, if you will, of God-honoring change or sanctification.
Omri Miles: The basis of this whole idea is that people absolutely can change, and Christians aren’t the only ones who can change. Unbelievers can change as well, but all change is not pleasing to the Lord. To convince, for example, a drunkard to stop drinking and live a sober life can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but that doesn’t mean that the drunkard is pleasing to the Lord just because he’s no longer drinking.
I think you get this idea when you see Paul turn a corner in Ephesians to describing the put-off, put-on process of living now in this God-honoring way that honors the gospel and this new creation that he’s made Christians into. And you just see how Paul is actually going for more than just the cessation of bad behaviors and the adoption of better social norms or something like that. Particularly in Ephesians 4:28, “he who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with those who are in need.”
Here he doesn’t just say ‘stop stealing.’ But he’s got in mind the one who’s stealing has to stop doing that. Absolutely, the behavior matters, but then he actually has to go to work. You could have someone who is slothful but doesn’t steal. That’s not good enough in God’s economy. What he wants for his church is to not steal but to actually labor.
You’re working hard with your own hands performing what’s good. Even the end for which or the work itself, you’re laboring for what’s good. And then he even has the motivation in mind so that he will have something to share with one who has a need. You just think about how that fleshes itself out in God-honoring change and counseling. We’re not calling people to merely not be thieves. We can call them and should call them to not be thieves, but not that merely.
We’re actually trying to get at the motivation. Until the person we’re discipling learns to adopt these new God-honoring motivations, then we could say our shepherding work isn’t done. We want them to get to a place where they’re able to think about work, the nobility or praiseworthiness of laboring honestly, and even with the motivation of serving others. I want to be someone who labors in such a way that I have something to share, not to live a selfish existence.
Another example would be in 1 Thessalonians 4, where Paul has on his radar sexual purity, but in the conversation, in the instruction about sexual purity, he says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel and sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God…” And then he goes on.
Just simply put the way you see the same principle there is that he makes this not an issue of human benefit. You can have a much simpler, more tranquil life if you were sexually pure. That’s not the carrot he dangles in front of them, but he tells them this is actually God’s will: Abstain from sexual immorality. Which when I was growing up, there was this whole abstinence movement and it was like the push for the Christian ethic, but it was stripped of, really, the power of Christ. And this is the central issue is how you get someone to the Christian ethic, like Paul does here has to be through pushing them to actually believe God.
He not only tells them to not be sexually immoral, but what that means is the opposite of that is actually self-control over your own body. You have to conduct yourself in such a way, live in such a way in this particular area of life, that can wear the label holiness or sanctification or honor.
You know, if you’re like me shepherding, when I was leading a young adults ministry not too long ago to help people think about even standards, dating and boundaries. Well, we don’t adopt worldly standards, but we need to actually help not only young men and women, but all Christians think about how God’s standard is as far beyond what the world’s is. The only way you can get to God’s standard of doing anything, whatever you do has to be able to be called honorable in this realm.
The way you get there is through faith. You have to believe what God has said in this particular realm, so that the way you live results in not merely change, but God honoring change.
Dale Johnson: Even as you described God honoring change, Omri, it is a distinction. You mentioned at the beginning, this concept of change and that humans can change all the time. We ebb and flow and think differently, do things differently. We practice differently. We behave differently. We get in different habits and so on. Human change is possible by human means, but what we’re describing is, you said, God honoring change. The way the Bible frames that is sanctification.
We know sanctification, the Bible makes very clear Omri, that it happens by faith. Now, that’s distinct and important. Why are we talking about this? Well, number one, this is not just a blanket work of the church. This is something that if we’re ministering the Word, we should be attempting to accomplish that same type of change within people that we’re discipling and working with.
This concept of sanctification by faith, it is a key tenet. What we’re after in biblical counseling is we believe that sanctification is the aim. This is the way Dr. Adams talked about it. This is the way Dr. Powlison talked about this. This is the way the Bible describes this. Our aim when we’re engaging with somebody is sanctification.
Now, this is important because pursuing that type of change happens by faith. What’s important here is that, guys, ideas have consequences. Ideas have consequences. Change, biblically, is altogether something different.
For us to settle for something less is not to pursue biblical counseling. It’s to pursue something that’s radically different for the individual. We may help remove stress from an individual. We may help them change some patterns and habits in their life. We may help them to live a life that’s much more comfortable and accessible in life, much more prosperous, much more emotionally settling.
But we’re not helping them in relation to God. This is a key distinction. Listen, ideas have consequences, Omri. What I mean by that is if we hold to this belief that sanctification really is the aim for counseling, and that sanctification or human change should be God-honoring, it happens by faith, those have consequences for how we practice and bring in or exclude from the counseling room. I want you to describe how we arrive at this particular concept from a biblical perspective.
You’ve mentioned a couple of passages, and I think your distinctions, particularly in Ephesians 4:28, are very helpful to say we have to aim at that which pleases God, not just simply a person who stops doing things that are dishonoring to God, but “what are they doing to pursue this?” as a concept of put off and put on as a key methodology in biblical counseling. Talk a little bit about where we get this concept of sanctification by faith as a primary aim for us in biblical counseling.
Omri Miles: One passage that comes to mind, 1 Corinthians 2. You just think about how Paul came to Corinth. This was his method of ministry. It was not to introduce in the way that he went about preaching the gospel, ministering to lost souls, and seeking to strengthen the church. He has to remind the carnal Corinthians that every benefit they’ve received from the gospel didn’t come from secular means or even a mixture of God’s revelation that Paul brought with some worldly methodology.
That’s why he says in 1 Corinthians 2:4, “and I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling in my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that,” 1 Corinthians 2:5, “your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”
When you think about the application for counseling as we minister the Word in the way Paul did, but this specific private ministry of the Word to introduce anything else but what the Bible prescribes—you will be setting people up to misplace their faith. Just like Paul is describing, you will set people up if you introduce EMDR, or if you introduce grounding into your counseling, or if you introduce worldly ideas into your counseling.
God forbid that people actually are helped to change by those things, because they’ll be in error thinking I was helped to pursue God’s ends through this other means. This happened recently in a fundamentals training for the training center that I was teaching this at. I said some really hard things and nobody kicked at them until the section of the training where I use AA as an example. There was someone in the training who had been helped by AA, and they protested and pushed back. The clause kind of came out in defense of AA.
The unfortunate thing is, I can praise God that this student in the class was helped to be sober through an AA program. But that is no defense of the method any more than Balaam’s donkey correcting Balaam is a new methodology or an endorsement to use donkeys in counseling. We understand that. That’s just in the basic way that you see Paul doing ministry, is one way that we can ground our philosophy of counseling, our theology of counseling, and rejecting any other approach and not aiming at something that doesn’t produce faith.
Another passage that comes to mind is Hebrews 11:19. Sometimes you get in that chapter by faith, by faith, by faith. Because in this discussion, the author isn’t even thinking about salvation. But in the particular Old Testament examples and texts that he brings to bear at that point in the sermon of Hebrews 11, he’s actually talking about how people endured, how people navigated hardship. How they were thrown to lions and sawn in two and went to death and martyred. He’s talking about endurance and growth in faith that all came about by believing the promises of God that didn’t come about by man’s wisdom. But it was specific revelation that had come from God.
Interestingly, before and after they were inscripturated it was always God’s Word that helped sustain God’s people. In counseling, as we’re thinking about that principle, if we go into counseling as disciples, thinking the only real help that this person is going to have is if I put God’s powerful Words in front of them. That is the only thing that can possibly change them. That narrows our focus in counseling to only put God’s word in front of people, and it gives us really, in one sense, a path for counseling.
As we’re sorting through the issues, I know what I have to do in counseling, if I’m going to be helpful, is help this person to believe God. There’s something that God has said in the vast 66 books of Scripture that this person needs to hear from me in the next hour and a half. What is it? What’s the truth? What’s the encouragement? What’s the comfort? What’s the warning? What’s the increase in knowledge?
What’s the truth I need to bring to bear on this situation so that that person walks away changed from my counsel?
Dale Johnson: Yeah, but what you just described, Omri, is a fundamental belief that it is the Word, by the Spirit that’s doing the work. That’s what you just described. One of the things that you mentioned is 1 Corinthians 2. I love that passage because I think it’s really helpful. It’s not simply, Omri, that Paul was ignorant of external philosophies.
He was informed. If you want to use that idea, he was informed of secular philosophies. He brings this up in Acts 17, and he uses these things as metaphors all the time. He’s not trying to do that to infuse new knowledge in a Gnostic way, which he speaks against so much in the New Testament. What he’s doing is he’s saying, I’m not ignorant of those things, but what I chose to do very specifically is to exclude that, because that’s not what brings about what you need in your heart and mind and your life at this particular moment. I think that’s a critical difference. Paul was not ignorant.
And listen, here’s the difference. When we think about being informed, even before you and I got on here live, I was describing to you things that I’m researching and studying and thinking about that are being informed about secular thought and the way the secular culture thinks about psychiatry and psychology. And some of the systems that they’re trying to bring forward, some of the ways in which those systems have been torn down, some of the ways in which even seculars are recognizing that the science that’s been proposed is really not good science.
So, it’s not to be ignorant about those things. To be informed, however, is different than implementation. To be informed is different than implement.
So, I can be informed about that. But what that does is it actually increases my confidence all the more in what you were just describing in the Word. It is the Word by the Spirit that does this type of work in a person’s life, where there is God honoring change, something that’s pleasing to God and good for the individual as a byproduct. And this is what we’re after.
How do we see this person not dismissing their experiences, but allowing the Word to help us to understand their experience, allowing the Word to give them correction, if necessary, or comfort in deep suffering? As I think about this—you brought up several texts—I’m thinking about this in terms of sanctification by faith.
So, Paul gives us in Colossians 2:6. I want to ask you. in just a second, just to preface this, because this is a text that comes to mind strongly in my mind that I think about this. But I want to ask you about several other texts that you may bring to bear on this concept as well.
When I think about the aim of biblical counseling is sanctification, and that does limit our method in what we’re trying to pursue, and us bringing the Word of God, because that’s the tool that the Spirit uses to accomplish this work in the hearts and minds of people. It’s not that we use our own reason to bring in knowledge or methodology that we think is going to manipulate the inner man.
The Bible actually says that that can’t happen. It is actually the Word by the Spirit. Our job is to use the tool that the Spirit uses to accomplish it. It’s placing ourselves at the mercy of the Spirit, and we’re trusting in the mercy of the Spirit as we present the Word faithfully. Now, do we need to grow in our skill in presenting the Word? 100%.
That’s where we need to be focused. Are some people weak in this area? So, we tend to run to things that are fleshly, that we feel like we can get our mind around and start implementing methodology that’s outside the Scripture. Yeah, we do that all the time. So, we need to grow in our skill of understanding the Word and applying it to people in their current circumstances.
But back to my passage, Colossians 2:6, where Paul makes very clear, in the same way in which you received the Lord Jesus. And Omri, if we were to ask the question: how is it that you received the Lord Jesus? The Bible makes very clear. In Romans, this is Paul’s primary teaching, we receive Christ by faith. So, Paul’s logic here is, he’s just told us about how all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ. The way you grow the church, Colossians 1:28, then Colossians 2:3, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge found in Christ. And then he says, in the same way in which you received the Lord Jesus, so walk in him. So, what’s he saying?
The way in which you walk—live, that’s a euphemism consistently used in Paul’s writings about how we live life. The function of everyday life, and how practical the Word is by that claim that Paul says these doctrinal truths are so important, now go walk, go live, not just spiritually—live life from a spiritual disposition, a way that’s pleasing to the Lord. And he says, it’s by this that we change. So, walk in Him, what? By faith.
Well, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word. So, how is it that we change in a way that’s honoring to God, pleasing to God, and good for us? Next in that passage, that guards us against empty philosophies and vain deceptions, as our mind grows encouraged by faith.
That’s what I think of when I think of sanctification by faith. And why we have to, as Paul did in 1 Corinthians 2, intentionally limit ourselves toward the Word. This is to say, you know, not that an external metaphor, the way Jesus taught was not helpful, right? We can use some sort of real thing that happened in life that doesn’t exactly appear in the Scriptures—but principally when we’re describing what the Word says about a human being and its understanding of a person, we’re encouraging them to walk by faith.
That’s what leads to change. I want to get your thoughts about that as you think about texts that sort of explode on your mind of this concept that reiterates this beauty of the Word. Why we should be devoted to using it, and be concerned when we see other people not just being informed by what’s out there secularly, but wanting to now implement it as if it achieves change that’s honoring to the Lord or good for a person.
Omri Miles: Yeah, well, the passage that comes to mind that has been so helpful to me on this is Proverbs 30: 5-6. “Every word of God is tested. He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words lest he reprove you and you be proved a liar.”
I mean, that verse succinctly describes the benefits of believing God. Every word of God is tested. That has to do with refined; It’s a smelting term, when the metal’s melted down by being put through intense heat. What you’re left with is a pure metal. All debris that were a part of that metal get incinerated in the heat, and what you’re left with is just the pure gold throughout Scripture and other passages: Psalm 12, Psalm 119, it’s describing God’s Word as refined, that same word there.
But then it says in Proverbs 35, “every word of God is tested. He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.” He’s not a shield to everybody. He’s not protection for everybody, but only those who take refuge in Him. And in this context, in this proverb, that is intimately connected to the Word, regarding every Word as perfectly flawless.
It doesn’t need my help. It doesn’t need my additions. When I step into a discipleship relationship, that person does not need my wisdom that comes from my puny mind. He needs the timeless wisdom of God to come to bear on his situation. And so, the protection comes when we take refuge in God by just receiving his Word without any inundations.
Nobody who introduces, I’m sure, no Christian who introduces secular practices into their counseling would say, I love adding to God’s word. I stick these secular studies into the back of my Bible because they are equally authoritative. Nobody would say that, but we do it anyway. I mean, we practically add to God’s Word when we say God’s word says this. “Yeah, but…” and this happens all the time in counseling.
When you’re trying to help somebody wrestle with their identity, you’re not identified as a person with a mood disorder. You don’t have schizophrenia. This isn’t your identity, whatever the label is. And there’s the “Yeah, but…”
At the end of the day, you have to believe what God says more than your own mind, more than what the experts have said. Even in, if I could just give an example, in Eliza Huey’s Trauma Aware, she’s got a number of appendices just explaining the clinical approaches to trauma care, relaxation techniques, calming strategies, breathing techniques. I don’t doubt Eliza Huey’s salvation. I don’t doubt she’s trying to help people. I’m sure she is, which is why she labored to write a book this extensive on trauma.
However, in seeking to supplement or help people with these secular techniques that actually undermine faith. She has, I would argue, practically violated this very principle in Proverbs chapter 30. What it doesn’t help people to do, to turn to grounding techniques or relaxation techniques, breathing exercises that don’t encourage faith, but find some kind of solace in a secular mindset about the dominance of the body over my trouble. What that does is it causes people to seek their safety, to seek their refuge in the secular techniques and the minds and ideas behind them.
The ultimate detriment is that when that happens—whether intentionally or not—on the part of the counselor who’s in error, the detriment of this is that people are hurt. They don’t experience the God-ordained protection that He gives through His Word, and God is not honored. And I think, again, to use 1 Corinthians 2, this is why Paul labored the way he did. He wanted God to get the maximum amount of glory, so that no one would boast, but the one who did boast would say, I’m boasting in the Lord. Let his boast be in the Lord. This, unfortunately, doesn’t happen when we mingle our counseling with secular ideas.
Dale Johnson: Two comments based on some of the things that you said, and then I want us to move on. The first one is there’s a legitimate opportunity cost when we employ a method that is, as you mentioned, like an EMDR or some sort of form of CBT or dialectical behavioral therapy or whatever. When we utilize those types of techniques, you can be very well-meaning, but the opportunity cost is that becomes your refuge. I think that was such a fabulous point. It’s not that, okay, I still reserve God as a refuge, and I’m going to use these means to get there. No, no.
The way that we hide in the refuge of God is in the fundamental principles and word of Christ. It is those things, those truths, that even Paul says in Philippians 4, 7, that Christ guards our heart and mind. Christ, who He is, His work, His promises, His teaching, His way, those things are what guard the heart. They are the genuine refuge that you mentioned in Proverbs 30, Psalm 46. All these concepts are what create this concept of refuge, and God is our refuge.
So, where are we encouraging people to take refuge and solace? Is it in some sort of technique that now calms them, or is it in the work and the promises of Christ applied by his Spirit to us? That’s a key, key distinction. Whatever we employ, we’re doing something. It’s an opportunity cost. We’re either pursuing refuge the way God calls us to or not.
The second thing is, you keep using the word discipleship. When you’re talking about counseling, in many ways, when you see counseling as discipleship, as was described from the beginning, from Jay and David and all the rest, it is intensive discipleship. When we look at discipleship in this way, it is helpful. It helps us to see that this is our aim. We’re after God-honoring change.
But what I’ve started to see happen, Omri, is this movement away from the concept of discipleship being primary, and now we move into this professionalized pursuit where we become a sage of the philosophies of the world that we think now are going to be helpful to people. That, in and of itself, is a markedly different aim, a markedly different strategy that we’re trying to approach in the counseling room. Ideas, as I said earlier, have consequences, and you’re going to go in two different directions depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish. If biblical counseling, the aim is not sanctification, you’re not going to see it as discipleship.
You’re going to find yourself trying to become some sort of professionalized sage that helps people on many different levels, thinking that other systems explain their experiences better, not intentionally, but neglecting the work of the Spirit and the Word. I think this is really helpful. We’ve been talking a lot about sanctification, it being our aim. Why do we make such a big deal about this? Why do we make such a big deal about this concept of sanctification?
Just explain the importance of thinking this way about the doctrine of sanctification, and why the doctrine of sanctification is not just simply some sort of lofty, ivory tower doctrine, and that’s where it should remain. The doctrine of sanctification is something that’s intended to be very practical, and it’s a primary focus that we have in the biblical counseling world. So, explain the importance of why it is that we think this way.
Omri Miles: Yeah, I’m pulling my J.C. Ryle off the shelf. He’s got in his book Holiness just a great section on why the doctrine for the health of the church is as important as justification.
So many errors come not head-on through a denial of justification by faith alone. They do, but the more common error, especially in our day, I would say, is on the side of sanctification. How do people practically change? What’s the role of the Scriptures? What’s the role of the church?
And if you just think about what’s common currently, all of those things are being undermined in terms of bibliology: what we believe about the Bible, theology proper, God’s role in sanctification, anthropology, how does man change, what’s required, ecclesiology, what’s the place where people get help to change.
I mean, the world, the culture is telling us in all of those realms something different than what the Bible is saying. The Scriptures aren’t sufficient to help you. You need expert opinions. Actually, the problems that man has are not even spiritual. They’re medical. That’s a wrong anthropology. The place people need to go or the source of this change is, again, man, not God. It’s a doctor, not the Lord. And then where do you go to get this help?
It’s the therapist, not pastors, not mature Christians in the church. And so, when it comes to the realm of or this doctrine of sanctification, I mean, every aspect, every answer that Scripture would give in this regard, we’re told something else by the culture. If a church believes in salvation by faith alone and Christ alone, that’s enough to save somebody. And God has left the church here as His enduring witness in this age, according to 1 Timothy 3. The church is the pillar and support of the truth.
So, as the church goes, so goes the truth. God’s truth is upheld when His church, according to that passage in 1 Timothy 3, conducts itself in the ways that God ordains. If you don’t have people living and walking in a manner pleasing to the Lord, then the truth is not compelling. The truth is not defended by an upright, orderly life. And frankly, I mean, can you imagine if marriages and homes in the church look the same as the world, if there were as many people on psychotropic drugs for the same problems that the world has, what’s compelling about our message in this life?
What good does it hold? The world could legitimately, if that’s the case, look at the church and say, “well, I’ll worry about your message in the afterlife if that’s all it’s good for, but what good does it do me now?” We have to be a radically different group of people because God’s name and God’s truth are really on the line. That’s by divine design. God has staked His own reputation, not in its essential essence, but you understand the representation of His name in the world.
Only the church represents God. ACBC doesn’t represent God. Midwestern Theological Seminary doesn’t represent God. I mean, my family doesn’t represent God in the way that He has established the church to do. And so, we ought to be laboring for this doctrine in the church so that our message is that much more compelling to the world.
You know, as you think about Abrahams going around throughout Canaan, can you imagine Abraham introducing himself to the next king? “Hi, my name is father of nations.” And then looking behind him, like you have no kids. Every single person that he introduced himself to, he’s got to explain why he’s called that. Father of nations, because “God made this promise years ago. I’m going to have a children. I know I don’t look like it. My wife’s old, but I’m telling you, this is how it’s going to come.”
I mean, if you think of that happening now, it still happens with the church. “Hey, there’s this God who’s coming back. He’s going to unleash wrath on the world. He’s promised that his kingdom are going to come. That’s our message flee from the wrath to come.” Everybody’s looking around saying peace, peace. He’s not coming.
And Peter has to remind his audience in 2 Peter 3. That’s what they’re saying. They’re scoffing and they’ve always scoffed. You have to actually live like somebody who believes the promises. And that just makes all the difference in the world.
Dale Johnson: Yeah. And that’s what, that’s where change actually happens. Where we believe by faith, the promises that God has given. And in that submission to the Spirit, we see the by-product of the fruit of the Spirit, when He produces something distinctly in us.
I want to talk about the other side of the opportunity cost of sanctification. When we don’t uphold it as a critical, important doctrine, as you just expressed, which I think is absolutely critical. Justification and sanctification are sort of like authority and sufficiency. If both are not upheld, what you know biblically, you begin to see the other doctrine eroded in one way or the other.
I was reading the other day Irenaeus and in his book against heresies, very early on, here’s one of the things that he says. He says, “error is never naked.” Now, what an important concept. And what he’s doing is he’s setting up this concept of how our minds are diluted with secular thinking. That we begin to introduce not just worldly thoughts, but we begin to introduce thoughts that are a dilution of who God is, how He represents Himself to be demands of the Scripture.
And he’s talking about the schemes of the evil one in this way. And he’s saying, “listen, don’t be fooled. You know, the evil one doesn’t present himself in all of the garb of his evil. He presents these damaging ideas cloaked as an angel of light.”
This is the way he does it. So, as you think about sanctification, sometimes we want to uphold that idea because we know it’s a biblical concept, but we have substitutes for sanctification or this change. Talk to me a little bit about some of the things that you see right now as it pertains to the practical ministry, the counseling room, this process of discipleship, where we find ourselves maybe substituting ideas for biblical concepts of sanctification.
Omri Miles: Man, this happens in a couple of ways I think that are popular currently. The more common error perhaps has to do with carving out, I think, some sub-truth, some sub-doctrine within scripture and making that the exclusive means of sanctification with good intentions.
Again, I think meaning well, the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement—you know, wherever we are in that. Or the post era of Young Restless and Reformed—where the gospel was everything and other doctrines were downplayed, in my opinion, in order to esteem the gospel as of first importance.
I think what happened, and you can just search for the books over the last 20 years that have been written on gospel centered, fill in the blank. Essentially what we did was we made the gospel the soul means or the soul truth by which people could be sanctified. And I think even the biblical counseling movement today still suffers from this in some ways as we grapple with or struggle to recognize the importance of other doctrines to biblical change. Every biblical counselor has got to know the gospel, has to be able to articulate the gospel, has to be able to run back to people’s various problems from the gospel back into their issues and from their issues launch into the gospel.
We’ve got to get the connections and we’ve got to be able to make that connection in a variety of ways. I don’t want to downplay that at all. That’s wise counseling. However, if all you know is penal substitutionary atonement, Jesus died in the stead of sinners under the wrath of God. And that’s the only tool in your counseling tool belt, you’re falling woefully short of the way Jesus and the apostles and the prophets, for that matter, did counsel. Because there’s more in the Bible than penal substitutionary atonement.
Jesus said in Matthew 4, “Man will live not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” So, we’ve got to be familiar with that much Scripture. We’ve got to be constantly working to get our arms around all of God’s word for counseling. So, I would say that’s one error is solo gospel. Can I say that? Gospel alone counseling.
Another one I would see is just the role that emotions or joy might play in our sanctification. There’s not much in life, I don’t think, that happens where our emotions aren’t involved. Our emotions are constantly engaged, either affirming or denying, in our good and in our bad emotions, the goodness or badness of whatever we’re engaged in.
If I’m bored with work, if I’m not enjoying it, my emotions are engaged in a way. If I’m singing in the gathering with zero emotions because I’m just mindlessly engaged, that’s saying something too. But when it comes to this particular area of the Christian life, I think there have been good godly theologians, writers, authors who have overemphasized the role that delight, joy, might play in change.
I’ll give you one example in my shepherding, an error that I’ve come up against commonly is: Is it obedience if I don’t actually ‘feel like it’? If my heart, so to speak, isn’t in it and I’m not joyful about obedience, then does it actually count?
And what I’ve encouraged men and women to think through is not that your emotions don’t matter, but they’re not most important. So, when I don’t feel joyful in some sense, I don’t feel happy about this duty that I need to go perform because I know God tells me to. When that’s the case and I choose to do it anyway because firstly, I don’t trust my emotions and secondly, I’m not going to make them the standard by which I live, but I profess Jesus as Lord. So how about Jesus is the boss of me? He’s the Lord.
And so, I live under the shadow of his authority. And so, I go do this thing that I know Jesus requires of me, even though I don’t ‘feel like it’. What does that say at the end of the day? Well, that says Jesus is Lord, not my emotions on one level. And that means I need to think rightly about that thing, so that I rejoice in obedience.
But just because there’s some aspect of my human constitution, my emotions, that hasn’t caught up to what my mind and my heart know are true, I go do it anyway. I should go do it anyway. And so, I just think that in our counseling that at least those two errors are substitutes for faith in the sense that I’m either not calling people to faith to believe all that God has said, or I’m calling them to act on not faith, but some other part of life like emotions.
I think those are just two damaging errors that if you fall into them too often or in your counseling, then again, you’ll be encouraging people toward the wrong refuge. You’ll be pointing them in the wrong direction in your attempts to help.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, I think that’s well said. I have one more question. I know we’re running long today. This was intentional. We wanted to spend some time really thinking through this because I think it’s impacting the whole of the biblical counseling world in a really important way.
So maybe, I get so tender, personally, Omri, about sanctification because I see it being thwarted in many ways. I see people trying to substitute or add to this concept of sanctification.
And really, I do see biblical counseling in its primary aim as sanctification. So, when I see other systems that are being employed or I see other methodologies that are being employed, to me, that becomes an affront, a disillusionment of what genuine sanctification is. Or essentially, we keep the same goal.
Yes, we want sanctification to happen, but now we’re using other ‘common grace insights’ that we’re going to bring into the counseling room that we think still accomplishes sanctification. Well, I would say that that’s not biblically how the Bible says sanctification happens, by faith, through the Word and the work of the Spirit.
So, this is why I get really concerned. Why I’m more vocal about things like this. Why when I see those who claim biblical counseling within the realm of biblical counseling, and they start utilizing secular systems and secular methodologies, again, not just to be informed, but to implement some of these things, it begins to raise the question: is the aim really sanctification? And even if you verbally say it is, can that biblically accomplish sanctification? And I say, no. I don’t think from a biblical perspective that’s not what the doctrine of sanctification describes.
And so, that’s why I get nervous, and the reason why I’m much more vocal about those things is because we are seeing the doctrine of sanctification hijacked in many ways. This is what Dr. Adams saw from the very beginning. Dr. David Powlison wrote about consistently in what the integrationists were doing. They were neglecting, I won’t say denying or intentionally trying to destroy it, but they were neglecting the beauty of the doctrine of sanctification. Which veiled them against the depth of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that were genuinely found in Christ or are good in the circumstances that we experience in the world.
Omri Miles: Just to comment on that, Dale, before you go on, just your connection about this doctrine with the goal of counseling is spot on. You can see it in what’s been written by the redemptive counseling camp, the Southeastern Theological Review.
I think this was in the round table discussion. Kristin Kellen actually added human flourishing to the goal of counseling. So, when you think about the uniqueness of aiming at the glory of God and seeing Christ-likeness formed in men, and the very fact that faith is the only means of getting there without faith, that can’t happen.
Well, once you substitute something for faith—the common grace insights, whatever it may be—and seek to help people change by them, you inevitably have to change the goal of counseling, which is actually being done, articulated, in print, something you have to settle. You have to move the bar down to something less than God’s glory, like human flourishing or civil righteousness.
You can get to ‘civil righteousness’ and human flourishing and common grace goods apart from faith. And I would just say, then let the world go after it. Let the world go after it. They have resources and means of accomplishing that. God has given us, as the church, a completely different task.
And we’re the only ones who can do it. Every other secular organization in the world can do that other stuff. So let them. We have the unique power of God in the gospel, the truth of God in his word, which we uphold. Let’s run hard after faith so that Christ is formed in men and women. This is our mission.
Dale Johnson: That’s right. And actually, I think you may have answered my final question, which was, how does all of this impact the method that we seek to utilize? And I think you summed it up really well. How we define our aims and what we’re willing to bring into the counseling room really resets what we want to accomplish.
And if we say that human flourishing is the primary goal, then guess what? We’re going to be willing to introduce concepts outside of the Scripture to accomplish what we have defined as human flourishing. I personally define human flourishing with the centerpiece of being conformed to the image of Christ, because that’s the way we as human beings were made. And what God is doing to make us most healthy is to repair all that’s broken in us that’s been destroyed by sin. How does He do that?
That is interwoven into His means of salvation, justification, sanctification, and ultimately glorification, which is what it means to flourish as a human being. And that’s not predicated on just things that happen outwardly or what I experience just outwardly. This is a growth that happens that only God can accomplish by His Word through the Spirit. So very helpful.
I’ll give you an opportunity if there are a couple of things that you wanted to add to this concept before we finish up. But this is just really good conversation, very helpful, I think, in sort of delineating how ideas are then connected to methodology. So just final word, Omri, of encouragement.
Omri Miles: The last thing that I’ll say on that note is when you think about methods, whether that’s the means of grace, just think in prayer, preaching, teaching, fellowship, a private ministry in a Word, and counseling, even the songs we sing, which is still a counseling methodology. Your precepts have become my songs in the house of my sojourning, the psalmist said. All of these things, we need to be thinking of them as a means of instilling faith, of laying hold of faith ourselves, of encouraging faith in others.
And in Hebrews 6:13, this is really what the author had in mind when he said, “for when God made the promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply you.’” And then Abraham’s response in Hebrews 6:15, “and so having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.”
God’s character and God’s promises, God’s attributes in His Word, that’s all he had. And having patiently waited, he obtained the promises. And we can say the same thing. By clinging to God’s Word by faith, we too, like Abraham, will one day inherit all of God’s promises. And so that’s the day that we long for. That’s the day to which we look.
Dale Johnson: I can’t help but respond to what you just said, because I think what you’re getting at, Omri, honestly, is very critical. And I see this among brothers and sisters in a way that I’m concerned about. I think we are timid, maybe even afraid, maybe feel insufficient in many ways, and impatient in the work of the Spirit, in the counseling room.
Again, let’s back up and say, you know what? We all need to grow in skill and application. But the fact of the matter is, what makes our palate have an appetite toward things outside the Scripture is our impatience to wait on God in the counseling room when we’re providing legitimate help and explanation for what’s happening with a person.
We’re encouraging them in a particular way, and we have an unwillingness to wait. We have a distinct impatience to wait. So that, as Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians 2, if we circle back there, we see that the power for change that happens when the change does happen is an honor to God.
It’s a boasting in Him, so that our faith rests in a particular place. I think this impatience is creating this appetite for us to long for outside ideas, common grace insights, that really become fleshly. We feel like we have control or power. What I mean is more we can maneuver and help. It places change within our power, if that makes sense, as opposed to placing ourself at the mercy of God.
I think that impatience that you described, longing for what’s to come, ultimately in glorification, but also longing and waiting for God to do a work in us in sanctification, is really a critical piece that we have to learn and grow in our wisdom and in our application in counseling.
So, brother, thank you so much for your time today and putting a lot of effort into thinking about this concept of sanctification and helping our biblical counselors really think through why this doctrine is so important, and not just to give mental assent to it, but the way in which we see the beauty of it all over the Scriptures and how we’re called to apply it by faith ourselves and as we disciple our counselees. So, Omri, as always, it’s good to be with you, brother. Thanks for joining us today.
Omri Miles: Thanks for the opportunity, Dale.
