Page 13 - Biblical Counseling I Textbook

• Acceptance
• Identity
• Etc.

Biblical counsel is aimed at heart change, not primarily at behavior change. Biblical counsel is not therapy—its
goal is not life improvement but the glory of Christ.
• It uproots worldly identities and replaces them with identity in Christ.
• It restores personal responsibility and points to the cross of Christ.
• It reclaims the proper purpose of life and aims at serving and worshipping Christ.

Biblical counseling rejects legalism in favor of grace-based help.
Legalism takes many forms; but within the counseling arena, it often results in exhortations to change separated
from the power for that change. In other words, there is a way in which we can wrongly call people to obedience
to righteous standards. We can do this either by leading them to believe that they have the ability in themselves
to obey—not helping them see that their obedience is dependent upon the grace of Christ found at the foot of
His cross—or by leading them to believe that God’s pleasure or displeasure is earned by what they do or do not
do.

This has implications for how we “counsel” the unbeliever since grace, properly understood, is impossible for
the unregenerate to comprehend or accept. As Bryan Chapell has written, “Humanity has no natural capacity to
receive (or perceive of) the notion that we can do nothing to gain God’s acceptance”.

Ephesians 2:8-10 addresses these issues and pushes us to counsel in grace through faith. Biblical counseling
strives to prevent the stubborn self-righteousness that is a core problem of the human heart.

If the gospel, the message of redemption in Christ, is not at the heart of our care and
discipleship, we are NOT doing Christian counseling. In fact, we are not doing
Christianity!
Galatians 1:6-9; 3:1-3

2.4 Let’s Practice…

1. List five of the seven core beliefs that the biblical counseling movement hold to:

2. Biblical counsel should be , not man-centered.

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