Paul's Passing Thoughts

One of Jude’s depictions of false teachers was “clouds without water”(v. 12). Clouds give hope during times of need that the land will finally be revived by rain. Likewise, false teachers appear to offer hope in times of need, but they are actually without the substance to deliver on the promise. Counselors who use the redemptive approach to counseling are not necessarily false teachers, but their approach will not help people; their counseling is clouds without water.

 

In the first two parts, I used Bill Baldwin’s article published in 1996 to demonstrate how proponents of Gospel Sanctification approach counseling, and will do the same in this post as well. I will make my first point from the following excerpt:

 

“When I tell a man to change his behavior — and he realizes he must — it is the most natural thing in the world that he should do so by relying on his natural strength and the force of his will. It is therefore essential that the counselor solemnly warn him against such a course.”

 

Here, we observe two reasons in this statement why redemptive counseling will not help people. First, biblical counseling is not just about outward behavior, but also how counselees think. Biblical counseling calls for a change in thinking (ie., biblical thinking), and behavior also with both being curative. The redemptive approach lumps efforts to change thinking into the same category as behavioral change with the following nomenclature: “change by our own efforts” (which is supposedly wrong). Therefore, an emphasis on biblical thinking (which is very critical) will not be emphasized any more than outward behavior, which, as can be seen by Baldwin’s statement, is devalued to begin with. Another example of lumping biblical thinking together with “teeth gritting, pick yourself up by the bootstraps, legalistic, living by lists and do’s / don’ts,” ect., ect., is Paul David Tripp’s statement in “How People Change”:

 

“. . . and the Bible does call us to change the way we think about things. But this approach again omits the person and work of Christ as Savior. Instead, it reduces our relationship to Christ to ‘think his thoughts’ and ‘act the way Jesus would act’”(p. 27, 2006 edn).

 

Notice also in Tripp’s statement that any effort to align our thoughts with the mind of Christ “omits….[the] work of Christ as Savior.” So, any effort on our part in the sanctification process is also likened to efforts to earn salvation. More on that later.

 

Secondly, as can be ascertained by Baldwin’s statement cited above, redemptive counseling makes a distinction between our work and the Spirit’s work in sanctification; when in fact, the two are seamless (the fruit of the Spirit is self control, Gal. 5:23). Counselors that suggest an either / or in the sanctification process reek havoc and confusion on counselees. To suggest that a counselee may not be walking in the Spirit even when he / she is obeying Scripture, because it may take effort, is to invite unhealthy introspection and mysticism into the counselee’s life. Besides, it’s a blatant contradiction to many verses such as Galatians 6:9. Jay Adams has stated the same concern this way:

 

“Strangely, there are, today, those who believe that if we do anything to please God, we are acting by ‘the arm of flesh.’ By that they mean we are doing something solely in our own strength. But, by making it an either/or matter, we upset the biblical balance of loving obedience and strengthening grace” (What is Sanctification, Institute for Nouthetic Counseling blog).

 

These are the first two reasons redemptive counseling will not help troubled Christians – it discourages biblical thinking, and it equates our effort in sanctification with walking in the flesh.

 

Baldwin continues:

 

“He has heard the law and glibly said “I will do what it says.” He must know of the holiness of that law and the condemnation declared against all who try to commend themselves to God by lawkeeping. The law must drive him to the gospel of Christ.”

 

The third reason gospel-driven counseling will not help troubled Christians is because it distorts the biblical relationship of the Law to justification verses sanctification. In other words, redemptive counseling makes no distinction between the two and their relationship to the Law. This can be clearly seen in Baldwin’s above statement: the sole role of the Law is to lead the counselee back to the gospel as before he / she was saved, and not for the purpose of instruction as Paul clearly indicated in 2Timothy 3:16. Likewise, Michael Horton apes Baldwin when he wrote the following:

 

“The imperatives drive us [Christians (emphasis by underline mine)] to despair of self-rightousness, the indicatives hold up Christ as our only savior.”

 

Horton goes on to say in the same article (“Creeds and Deeds: How Doctrine Leads to Doxological Living”) that an emphasis on deeds (ie., obedience) “leaves the sinner in the tattered garment of fig leaves rather than robed in the righteousness of Christ.” The suggestion by Horton is that efforts at good behavior removes the righteousness of Christ from the believers life.

 

This is the third reason gospel-centered counseling will not help Christians; because it disavows the instructive value of the Law in the believer’s life.

 

Baldwin’s next statement will be considered for my next points:

 

“And that gospel must long be dwelt upon that it may evoke faith — whether for the first time or as a stirring up and a repeated application of a faith already present. Only works that spring out of such a faith constitute the gospel obedience [emphasis mine] held out in Scripture.”

 

Hence, instead of learning more and more about how to apply God’s imperatives / wisdom to life, and doing so, which is key to a sound Christian life (Matthew 7:24-27), “faith” is supposedly evoked by a continual revisiting of the gospel. Notice that the primary goal is to evoke faith, via the gospel, just like in justification. Therefore, redemptive counseling is the extrapolation of justification moving forward with no recognition of a sanctification that involves a co-laboring of the believer. In essence, it is sanctification by faith alone in the same way that justification is by faith alone, which, and don’t miss this: results in “gospel obedience.” What is gospel obedience? Simply put, it is often referred to as “the imputed active obedience of Christ.” In other words, when we continually revisit the gospel, the same monergistic results of justification are to be expected in sanctification, and therefore, both are a total work of Christ only. Said yet another way, Christ obeys for us. In case you think Baldwin is some isolated crack-pot, consider this quote by Michael Horton:

 

“Where we land on these issues is perhaps the most significant factor in how we approach our own faith and practice and communicate it to the world. If not only the unregenerate but the regenerate are always dependent at every moment on the free grace of God disclosed in the gospel, then nothing can raise those who are spiritually dead or continually give life to Christ’s flock but the Spirit working through the gospel. When this happens (not just once, but every time we encounter the gospel afresh), the Spirit progressively transforms us into Christ’s image. Start with Christ (that is, the gospel) and you get sanctification in the bargain; begin with Christ and move on to something else, and you lose both” (Christless Christianity, pg. 57).

 

The following statement by Tullian Tchividjian should also be considered:

 

“As I’ve said before, I once assumed (along with the vast majority of professing Christians) that the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But I’ve come to realize that ‘the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths, but more like the hub in a wheel of truth.’ As Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn’t simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A-through-Z. The gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life; it’s the fuel that keeps Christians going every day. Once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel—and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes every day. Since we never leave off sinning, we can never leave the gospel.”

 

Other extremes of this doctrine can be seen in Horton’s statement that, in essence, synergistic salvation is a false gospel. Therefore, since as Tullian Tchividian notes, a co-laboring in sanctification is the orthodox view among Evangelicals, redemptive counselors will begin their counseling relationship with most counselees by assuming they are lost, and will first focus on converting them to said doctrine. Furthermore, in marriage counseling, if one spouse accepts this doctrine and the other one doesn’t – the counseling will continue (erroneously) with a mixed marriage in view.

 

Another angle by Paul David Tripp can be added for good measure. On pages 171 and 172 ( starting in the last paragraph on page 171) of “How People Change,” Tripp propagates the idea that we are still spiritually dead as believers and are not an “improved version” of our old selves. Therefore, since Christ is the only one in us that is spiritually alive, we have unlimited potential because it is Christ in us that is doing everything (this, of course, is in blatant contradiction to Ephesians 4:20-24).

 

In conclusion on these points, the following are further reasons numbering four through eight of why redemptive counseling will not help troubled Christians:

 

4. It tells the counselee that sanctification is by faith alone in the same way that justification is by faith alone.

 

5. It tells the counselee that Christ obeys for us.

 

6. It replaces a deeper knowledge of God’s wisdom and its application to life with a mystical “deeper knowledge of the gospel.”

 

7. It often assumes that the counselee is not saved for erroneous reasons. This is obviously detrimental to a healthy and productive counseling process.

 

8. It will misinterpret marriages as mixed for erroneous reasons. This is also detrimental to productive marriage counseling.

 

 

Lastly, redemptive counseling presents the counselee with an erroneous picture of how sanctification is experienced. The counselee is told that when Christ is obeying for us, obedience will be experienced as a joyful, unconscious reaction. Note carefully what Baldwin says in the same article:

 

“If an act does not spring from a conscious exercise of faith stirred up by gospel truth, we can be almost certain the act does not spring unconsciously therefrom. And whatever is not of faith is sin….Give me a man who preaches the law with its terror and Christ with his sweetness and forgets to preach the law as a pattern of the fruit of sanctification and what will result? In two months his parishioners will be breaking down his door begging to be told what behavior their renewed, bursting with joy, hearts may best produce. And when he tells them, they will be surprised (and he will not) to discover that by and large they have produced exactly that.”

 

Note, according to Baldwin (and likewise, others such as John Piper), true obedience is always joyful and unconscious, even to the point of obeying Scripture without first knowing what it says (because its not us obeying anyway). Should we teach troubled Christians these things? I think not. Besides, it makes a mockery of Matthew 26:37- 42. Obeying God can often be necessarily difficult for many reasons.

 

Gospel-driven counseling cannot, and will not help troubled Christians. Furthermore, evangelicals have a duty and responsibility to warn other Christians to stay clear of this counsel that promises to give hope, but cannot deliver. This theology and its counselors are clouds without water.

 

paul