Heath Lambert: The glory of God is central to Scripture and because it’s central to Scripture it’s central to the Christian life and that’s why we want to talk about it on the podcast this week. In October, on the second, the third, and the fourth, the first Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of that month of this year, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors is having our Annual Conference on biblical counseling where we will focus on the topic of biblical counseling and the Protestant Reformation. Our goal during those days is to talk about the Five Solas of the Reformation and talk about how they find a natural home in the ministry of counseling and how it is the biblical counseling movement who best portrays the commitment to the Solas and works out those in the context of ministry. We’re actually going to be making the controversial point that it is biblical counseling that is the most faithful manifestation in terms of the counseling world of the principles of the Protestant Reformation. And this week, we’re going to talk about the relationship of counseling to the glorification of God.
When you talk about the glory of God, in Christian theology, we talk about two realities pertaining to the glory of God. And I want to talk about each one of those by looking at Psalm 138:4-6. And in those verses, the Bible says, “All the kings of the earth will give thanks to You, O Lord, when they have heard the words of Your mouth. And they will sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is exalted, yet He regards the lowly, but the haughty He knows from afar.” This is a text that talks about the glory of God in its internal sense. When theologians talk about the internal glory of God, they are talking about God as He is glorious. That is, God is glorious. That is who He is. It’s an essential attribute of His person. God is glorious and it is impossible for God to fail to be glorious. This is what the text says. It says, “…great is the glory of the Lord.” That is true irrespective of any other reality, irrespective of whether we understand that He is glorious, God is so. In this sense, God is glorious whether people acknowledge it or not. It is impossible for a human being to add glory to the Lord, because that’s who He is. And so, when theologians, when the Bible authors speak about this glory in this internal sense, they’re talking about an essential characteristic of God.
But there’s another sense in which we can talk about the glory of God and that is in its external sense. And in the external sense is when we talk about human beings giving glory to the Lord. For example, we’re told in 2 Corinthians 9 that some Christians will glorify God because of something that other Christians do that God initiated in them. It is possible, and in fact, it happens throughout the Scriptures where Christians, people of the faith, are called to give glory to God. In fact, here in this text, in verse 5, it says, “They,” the kings of the earth, “will sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.” So, in this text, we have the internal glory of God, He is glorified, but we also have the external glory of God where people give glory to the Lord as they sing of the ways of the Lord. When we talk about the external glory of God, we are talking about people of the faith acknowledging what is internally true of the Lord. We agree that God is glorious and when we agree that He is internally glorious we are talking about the external glorification of God in giving Him what is present in His person.
So, to recap, when we talk about the glory of God, we have to understand it in two ways. We have to understand the glory of God internally, who God is in His nature and His essence, and we have to talk about the external glory of God in our acknowledgment of that in the Christian life. When we understand those realities behind the glory of God, it allows us to talk about the glory of God and its relationship to counseling. In particular, what I want to talk about is how people who are committed to biblical counseling are best equipped to proclaim the glory of God and to advance the glory of God in their counseling.
Now, we need to be really clear here, because when we talk about Christians, every Christian by definition wants to exalt and glorify the Lord. This includes people in counseling approaches that are different than biblical counseling. There are Christian psychologists who want to glorify God. There are integrationists who want to glorify God. There are plenty of people who love and trust the Lord Jesus Christ who want to glorify God but who are committed to a different counseling system than that of biblical counseling. And so, the issue here isn’t one of desire, do our brothers and sisters with whom we disagree on counseling, do they want to glorify God? The question is, are they advocating a system of counseling that actually glorifies the Lord? Our brothers and sisters in Christ who are committed to integration, to Christian psychology, they want to glorify God and they do glorify God by laying claim to God’s glory in the created order. They will say, “We want to glorify God by saying that God is the King over the world of psychology. God is the King over the world of secular therapy. And we glorify Him when we say, ‘Hey, look at the evidences of God in the secular, psychological world and we glorify Him when we use those realities in our counseling.’”
Now, I want to say it does glorify God to acknowledge the lordship of Christ over every area of life including secular therapy. Jesus Christ is the King over those areas and it is good and right for every Christian to acknowledge that. But glorifying God and honoring Him as the King over all of life and all of the created order is something very different than how we glorify God in the lives of troubled people who come for counseling help. And the reality is when people come for counseling help, when they have specific questions and specific concerns that are creating pain in their life, the issue in that moment is not whether we will glorify God theoretically by acknowledging His sovereignty over the created world, over secular therapy, the issue is will we glorify God particularly by pointing people to the glory of God as it’s revealed in the Scriptures in the context of a counseling conversation?
And the reality is that persons who are committed to a Christian counseling perspective, integrationist, Christian psychologist, levels of explanation, transformational psychology, all of those different labels that refer to various Christian counseling approaches, as their theoreticians write about these things, they obscure the glory of God by obscuring the resources of God that are revealed in Scripture. And so, when a person comes with hurt and pain that is the kind of hurt they bring into counseling, and we don’t point them to God’s resources as revealed in Scripture as sufficient to help them then we are not glorifying God in that person’s life and in ministry to that person. When we say the Bible has some good things to say to you and Jesus does some great things for you to get you into heaven but we don’t have the resources to give you the details about how the grace of Jesus and the words of Scripture matter in your life right now and can change your situation or can change your understanding of your situation, when we fail to do that and instead point to resources that God has not inspired, then we do undermine the glory of God.
I realize this is very controversial. I realize this does not go over well with people who love the Lord Jesus Christ and who feel in their heart a desire to want to glorify God. Again, we’re not talking about motivations. We’re talking about what actually happens here. The reality is that if you want to glorify God, you have got to be committed to doing that in the way the Scriptures tell you to do it. If you want to glorify God, you have to exalt Jesus Christ in every area of life and not make a decision that there’s going to be some conversations where you will not speak of Him and those conversations are called counseling conversations. When that happens, the glory of God is inhibited and it’s wrong.
This applies to counselors. If you are a counselor and you are a Christian and you are not committed to biblical counseling and you’re hearing this and you’re tempted to be offended, I want to appeal to you, as your brother in Christ, as someone who cares for you, don’t be offended. Turn. You can change your counseling approach any time you want. Any time you want you can pay attention to the Scriptures. You can make a commitment that when somebody comes in with me, I’m going to point them to the Bible, I’m going to point them to Jesus Christ, and I’m going to glorify the God who is. You can do that anytime you want. And in fact, that’s what we all ought to do. We all ought to say, “Right here, right now, today, no matter what my counseling commitment has been up to this moment, I am going to be committed to the honor and glory of God in the counseling room, and that means I’m going to be committed to the Scriptures, I’m going to be committed to Jesus Christ, and I’m going to point people to those two realities.”
This also applies to counselees. This applies to people who would seek out counseling. You need to find somebody who’s going to help you with your problems that is going to be committed to glorifying God. You need to glorify God more than you need to take the next breath of air. And I’m just telling you, you don’t have time for a counselor who’s going to point you in another direction. You don’t have time for a counselor who’s going to give you a different agenda. Your life is about doing everything for the glory of God, and if counseling, which deals with life’s problems, is about anything other than giving glory to God, then you need to find help from another source.
This is what we’re committed to at ACBC. We are committed to restoring the glory of God in the counseling room. This is why we want to have a conference and say the Protestant Reformation was not just about the truths we confess, it’s about the life that we live. The glory of God is not some item on some confessional document. It has to do with whether we are living faithfully today. It has to do with whether we’re responding to marriage difficulties the way we ought. It has to do with whether we’re responding to abuse the way we ought. It has to do with whether we are responding to relational conflict at work the way we ought. Our lives are about the glory of God. Counseling, therefore, is about the glory of God and at ACBC we’re committed to unpacking this, and we want to invite you to help us do that and to participate in that conversation at our annual conference this year.
