What
are the goals of biblical counseling?
Biblical
Counseling is using God’s Word to discern thinking and behaviour that God wants
to change, for the benefit of the counselee, and the glory of God. The goal is to help our counselee become
God’s kind of person; becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ. If we don’t start with this goal, the end
results will be wrong.
Our motive has
to be love; “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a
good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:5). “If I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If
I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to
be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
“The overarching purpose of preaching and counseling is God’s
glory. But the underneath side of that
splendid rainbow is love. A simple
biblical definition of love is: The fulfillment of God’s commandments. Love is a responsible relationship to God and
to man. Love is a relationship
observance of the commandments of God.
The work of preaching and counseling, when blessed by the Holy Spirit,
enables men through the gospel and God’s sanctifying Word to become pure in
heart, to have peaceful consciences, and to trust God sincerely. Thus the goal of nouthetic counseling is set
forth plainly in the Scriptures: to bring men into loving conformity to the law
of God.”1
If the counselee
has not yet made a salvation decision for themselves, that is the first
priority. (2 Timothy 2:25) No biblical change is more important than salvation,
no further biblical change can take place until someone becomes a believer in
Christ; it is the necessary basis for all righteous living to flow out of.
(Ephesians 2:1-10) Once someone is a
believer counseling aids them in maturing (sanctification) in faith.
(Colossians 1:28)
God
instructs us to be selective about the counsel we seek in our lives; “How
blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in
the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water…. ” (Psalm 1:1-3a) Biblical counsel is a wise choice as it agrees
with God, uses His Word to address the issues of life, and results in a secure,
rooted life.
1
“Competent to Counsel”, Jay Adams, page 54-55
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