Page 15 - Biblical Counseling I Textbook

Study Section 3: Establishing a Framework for Biblical Counseling

3.1 Connect

How do you know that what a person tells you is the truth? Are there some special ways we can
determine truth from error? When it comes to the “big ideas” in life, we certainly can know what is
true and what is false by testing the idea against God’s Word, the Bible. If the idea does not square
with Scripture, then it is false. For example, scientists say the world came into being by rote chance
when a sea of chemicals where struck by lightening to miraculously form a simple protein, and then
through millions of years, the systems became more and more complex through a process called natural
selection. Natural selection says that certain creatures inherited by chance a characteristic that allowed it to
survive while the weaker died. Some scientists say there were millions of years of death for evolution to occur.

How does this square with the Bible? The Scriptures say GOD created everything we see in six literal days and
that death entered the world as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, after everything was created. Obviously the two
ideas about how the world’s creatures came into being cannot both be true. A Biblicist must reject evolution
since it contradicts God’s Word. Today, we are going to look at the framework upon which a biblical counselor
must base his counseling on…

3.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to describe the differences between general and special revelation and
which knowledge can bring about lasting change.

2. The student should be able to explain why the gospel is central to the counseling ministry.

3. The student should be able to describe the role of the local church in a counseling ministry.

3.3 The Framework can only come through God’s revelation.

What role does God’s general revelation play?

God reveals Himself to the world through the physical universe (Ps. 19:1-6; Rom. 1:18-20).

In the opening chapters of Romans, Paul makes it clear that God’s creation, including the moral
inclinations of humanity, declare the existence of God to all people in a manner enough to condemn every one
of them. He has made “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature…clearly seen” to them “so
that they are without excuse” (1:20). This revelation is general in nature. In other words, it does not provide any
of the details of God’s redemptive purposes and plans while it does declare infinite wisdom and goodness that
would be enough to send people in search of this great God were it not for their spiritual deadness and
rebellion.

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