Gospel Conversations

How to Care Like Christ

Robert W. Kellemen

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780310516163
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How does a person learn to counsel others with the truth of God’s Word? Bob Kellemen believes that the best way to learn counseling is by doing it—by giving and receiving biblical counseling in the context of real, raw Christian community.

Gospel Conversations explores the four compass-points of biblical counseling:

• Sustaining: “It’s Normal to Hurt.”
• Healing: “It’s Possible to Hope.”
• Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin, but Wonderful to Be Forgiven.”
• Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Mature.”

These four compass points combine to equip readers to develop twenty-two ministry relational competencies—the “how to” of caring like Christ. This book serves as a practical training manual that can be used for lab and small group interaction.

Gospel Conversations is the second volume in The Equipping Biblical Counselors Series, a comprehensive relational training curriculum for the local church that provides a model for equipping God’s people to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth. This two-volume series weaves together comprehensive biblical insight with compassionate Christian engagement.

SECTION 1

FOUNDATIONS OF BIBLICAL COUNSELING

CHAPTER 1

5 Biblical Portraits of the Biblical Counselor: Sharing Scripture and Soul

Picture Trudy and Tony. Referred to you from another church, you’ve never met them before today. They’ve come to you after already having seen a divorce attorney. Trudy tells you that she is “100 percent motivated to be in counseling” and “desperately wanting to see our marriage saved.” Tony is meeting with you because he feels it’s his obligation to “make one more attempt to save this marriage.”

What do Trudy and Tony need from you first? Do they need truth — scriptural insight about sacrificial love applied to their marital relationship? Or do they need love — to connect with you, to build a relationship with you so that they are ready to hear truth from you?

Which is most important in biblical counseling? Is the ministry of the Word primary and loving relationships secondary? Or is the relationship central, and you need to wait to share truth until you’ve established a trusting relationship?

Are these even the right questions? Do the Scriptures divide truth from relationship in ministry? Does the Bible speak in terms of ranking truth and love? Wouldn’t that be somewhat like asking, “Which counselor is least effective: The one who ignores the greatest commandment to love God and others, or the one who ignores commands to counsel from the Word?”

The Bible never pits truth against love. It never lays them out on a gradation or ranking system. The Bible presents equal couplets: truth/love, Scripture/soul, Bible/relationship, truth/grace.

Maturing as a Biblical Counselor

Self-Counsel and Group or Partner Interaction

1. Why does it seem so hard to “blend” truth and love? Which do you tend more toward: The truth side or the love side? Why? What implications might that have for your growth as a biblical counselor?

2. In your life, who has modeled well truth and love as they have ministered to you? What impact has their blending of truth and love had on your life? On how you do ministry?

3. How would you answer these questions about what has priority in biblical counseling?

a. Which is most important in biblical counseling? Is the ministry of the Word primary and loving relationships secondary? Or is the relationship central, and we wait to share truth until we’ve established the trusting relationship?

b. Are those even the right questions? Do the Scriptures divide truth from relationship in ministry? Does the Bible speak in terms of ranking truth and love?

4. In addition to 1 Thessalonians 2, where would you go in Scripture to answer this question: Does the Bible teach that only the message matters, or does it teach that the messenger’s character and the messenger’s relationship to the hearer also matter greatly?

Counseling Others

5. If you were meeting with Trudy and Tony, what do you think they would need from you during your first meeting? What would your counseling with them during the first meeting “look like” and focus on?

Speaking the Truth in Love

And yet . . . we’re forced to ponder these questions about truth and love in every counseling session. I was forced to ponder the issue again recently when I listened to an excellent closing session at a biblical counseling conference. The message was biblical, relevant, and powerful. The wise, godly speaker wrapped the entire message around the theme that the power in our ministry comes solely from the power inherent in God’s Word.

His concluding illustration put an exclamation point on his theme as he shared about the Christmas present he purchased for his daughter. The gift arrived two days before Christmas, delivered by “the UPS guy.” The speaker’s daughter, hearing the UPS truck pull into the driveway, bolted to the door to meet the delivery man. She snatched the package from his hands and raced to place it under the tree, not the least bit focused on the UPS guy. The speaker concluded with the phrase, “We’re just the UPS delivery guy. The real gift, the great present, is the Word that we deliver. We’re just the UPS delivery guy!”

I joined the crowd in “Amen!” I loved the illustration. I “got” the theme — the power is in the Word of God!

But then . . . later that evening, I started asking myself, “Is that the complete biblical picture? Don’t we always say that God calls us to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), to make our love abound in knowledge and depth of insight (Phil. 1:9 – 11), and to share not only the gospel but our very own souls (1 Thess. 2:8)? Does the Bible really teach that only the message matters, or does it teach that the messenger’s character and the messenger’s relationship to the hearer also matter greatly?”

Once these questions started whirring through my mind, I couldn’t sleep. Thinking about 1 Thessalonians 2:8 regarding sharing Scripture and soul, I turned in my Bible to 1 Thessalonians 2. As I read those twenty verses, five portraits of the biblical counselor emerged from the pages of my Bible. I saw then what I share with you now:

Biblical counseling involves gospel conversations where we engage in soul-to-soul relationships as brothers, mothers, fathers, children, and mentors who relate Christ’s gospel story to our friends’ daily stories.

God calls us to love well and wisely. That’s why, in biblical counseling, we must weave together in our ministries what is always united in God’s Word — truth and love — comprehensive biblical wisdom and compassionate Christlike care. Biblical counseling is not either/or: either be a brilliant but uncaring soul physician or be a loving but unwise spiritual friend. God calls us to be wise and loving biblical counselors.

Not Just the UPS Delivery Guy

We are more than just the UPS delivery guy. According to 1 Thessalonians 2, God calls us to share his Word with the love of a brother, mother, father, child, and mentor. This is vital to our ministries today, just as it was vital to Paul’s ministry in Thessalonica. Based on 1 Thessalonians 2:2 – 3, 5 – 6, commentator Leon Morris notes that

it is clear from the epistle that Paul had been accused of insincerity. His enemies said that he was more concerned to make money out of his converts than to present true teaching. The accusation would be made easier in virtue of the well-known fact that itinerant preachers concerned only to feather their own nests were common in those days. Paul was being represented as nothing more than another of this class of preaching vagrants.⁴

Morris goes on to explain that in Paul’s day,

holy men of all creeds and countries, popular philosophers, magicians, astrologers, crack-pots, and cranks; the sincere and the spurious, the righteous and the rogue, swindlers and saints, jostled and clamored for the attention of the credulous and the skeptical.⁵

That’s why the unity of Scripture and soul, truth and relationship was so vital to Paul. In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul is saying, “You doubt my credentials? Then be a good Berean who examines the message and the messenger — what I say, who I am, and how I relate to you.” It’s the identical message that Paul sends to every young minister anywhere. If you want to validate your ministry, then “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:16, emphasis added).

Paul writes 1 Thessalonians 2 to affirm his ministry as from God and to affirm the nature of all ministry from God by modeling the sharing of Scripture and soul, by embodying truth in love. It is God’s plan to use his Word powerfully when we share it truthfully and lovingly — like a brother, mother, father, child, and mentor.

Portrait #1: The Love of a Defending Brother

Paul uses the Greek word for “brother” twenty-one times in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He starts his first letter to the believers in Thessalonica by letting them know that he always thanks God for them: “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you” (1 Thess. 1:4). Paul is saying they are siblings in God’s family by grace. Imagine hearing from the great apostle Paul that you are family; you are equals — equally loved by God by grace.

Could our counselees say this of us? “I experience you as a beloved brother embracing me as a fellow, equal member of God’s forever family by grace.”

Paul’s use of the word “brothers” is not limited to a family context, but also extends to an army/military context in the sense of a band of brothers who have one another’s backs. Paul says it like this in 1 Thessalonians 2:1 – 2: “You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.” The word “opposition” means agonizing and struggling together. It was used of teammates training together and of soldiers fighting together in warfare.

Though persecuted, Paul courageously shares because he cares. Paul describes his counseling ministry in similar language in Colossians:

We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. I want you to know how much I am struggling for you. (Colossians 1:28 – 2:1a)

Because I sell a lot of books out of my home, I know my UPS delivery guy quite well. While he sometimes struggles to lift those boxes up my stairs, it is not because he sees me as a brother or a teammate.

Notice that in 1 Thessalonians, Paul dares to share the gospel with his Christian brothers and sisters, and in Colossians, Paul labors out of love to proclaim Christ to his believing brothers and sisters. Paul’s brotherly relationship is not devoid of truth content; it is richly focused on Christ’s gospel of grace.

Could our counselees say this of us? “I experience our relationship as a band of brothers, and I experience you as a teammate who fights for me and agonizes on my behalf as you relate Christ’s grace to my life.”

Portrait #2: The Love of a Cherishing Mother

In the first portrait, Paul says to his counselee, “I’ve got your back, bro!” In this second portrait, Paul speaks as a mother who says, “I long for you with a nourishing and cherishing affection.” We read of Paul’s motherly love in 1 Thessalonians 2:7: “But we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.”

Paul describes his gentle relational ministry as like a nursing mother, literally describing the tender nourishing of a breast-feeding mother. The word “caring” highlights cherishing, keeping warm, tenderly comforting. The Reformer John Calvin portrays the scene beautifully: “A mother nursing her children manifests a certain rare and wonderful affection, inasmuch as she spares no labor and trouble, shuns no anxiety, is worn out by no labor, and even with cheerfulness of spirit gives herself to her child.”⁶

In 1 Thessalonians 2:9 we learn the nature of the nourishment Paul shares: “. . . while we preached the gospel of God to you.” Paul’s motherly love is not simply touchy-feely love devoid of content. It is passionate love filled with the mea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Christlike Care
• Section 1: Foundations of Biblical Counseling
• Section 2: 5 Sustaining Biblical Counseling Competencies: Grace
• Section 3: 5 Healing Biblical Counseling Competencies: Rests
• Section 4: 6 Reconciling Biblical Counseling Competencies: Peacee
• Section 5: 5 Guiding Biblical Counseling Competencies: Faith
• Commencement: How the Body of Christ Cares Like Christ
• Appendixes: Biblical Counseling Resources
• Notes
• Bibliography of Sources Cited and Consulted
• Scripture Index