LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The Godward Focus of Biblical Counseling
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
By definition, the biblical counselor is one who is persuaded of and allegiant to a Christian
worldview, that is, one who functions within a frame of reference that consciously sees all of
the realities and relationships of life from a perspective that is biblically coherent and
consistent, and thus honors the God of Scriptures. The one element of such a worldview that
most dramatically distinguishes it from all pretenders is the commitment to a theocentric
perspective on all of life and thought. Thus any model of counseling that is authentically biblical
will be framed, designed, and executed in happy submission to the biblical demand that our
lives be lived out entirely for the glory of God! In short, biblical counseling is animated by a
godward focus.
The temptation today, even within the Christian community, is to do otherwise, to conduct
counseling with a primary focus on someone or something other than God. But the biblical
counselor must be committed to a preeminently godward focus in counseling. Why? There are
three basic reasons: (1) because God demands it; (2) because the natural exaltation of self is
destructive; and (3) because the soul-satisfying life God intends for His children can only be
found through Jesus’ spiritual paradox: deny self and focus on God.
THE MORAL IMPERATIVE
Simply stated, a godward focus must be zealously maintained in biblical counseling because
God demands that it be so. In one of the Old Testament’s most precise articulations of the
covenant-keeping nature of God, YHWH declared through the prophet Isaiah,
Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
Who gives breath to the people on it,
And spirit to those who walk in it, …
“I am the LORD, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another,
Nor My praise to graven images.” (Is. 42:5, 8)
Later in the same section of prophecy, as YHWH foretold the mighty deliverance He would
accomplish on behalf of His covenant people, He reiterated this profound reality: “For My own
sake, for My own sake, I will act; / For how can My name be profaned? / And My glory I will not
give to another” (Is. 48:11).
God, who has made Himself known in Scripture, is jealous for His own glory (Deut. 4:24).
He is a sovereign God who demands that people acknowledge Him as God and honor Him as
the Creator and Sovereign of all the universe. This moral imperative to honor God is most often
communicated in Scripture in contexts relating to God’s glory. The Hebrew term for “glory” is
chabod, which basically means “to be heavy, weighty.”
1 Deriving the idea of glory, dignity, or
personal worth from the concept of weightiness is typical of Hebrew progression of thought. To
the Semitic mind, honor or dignity could not be reduced to a purely ideal quality; rather, those
concepts depended for their significance upon the concrete concept of something “weighty in a
man which gives him importance.”
2 Although the term chabod is used with various literal
connotations in the Old Testament, the concept most often conveyed by the term is that of a
weighty person: one who is honorable, impressive, and worthy of respect.
3 This connotation
prevails in more than half the occurrences of the term in the Old Testament.
4
Thus, the biblical notion of glory involves more than intrinsic dignity or value; it includes
the visible representation of that intrinsic value. For example, chabod connotes not only a rich
man’s dignity and standing in his community but the riches that demonstrated his dignity
(livestock, silver, and gold in Gen. 13:2; the wealth Jacob carried away from Laban in Gen. 31:1);
5 not only the honor of the priestly office but the distinctive garments worn by the priests to
manifest the dignity of their office (Ex. 28:2, 40);
6 not only the unique and infinite splendor and
majesty of the person of YHWH, but the ineffable physical glory-cloud that testified of His
covenant-keeping nature and sovereign rule in the midst of His people.
7 In sum, the term
chabod speaks not only of intrinsic dignity and worth but of the external and tangible
manifestation of that worth.
Thus when YHWH insists that He “will not give His glory to another” (Is. 42:3; 48:11), there
is more at stake than the intrinsic worth of His sovereign person. Based on God’s use of the
term glory in those statements, we conclude that His demand is not only that we personally
acknowledge His unique dignity and infinite perfection, but that we consciously and publicly
parade those majestic realities. Indeed, it is the stewardship of every child of God not only to
embrace the truths that God has revealed concerning Himself but to deliberately and
consistently order every aspect of life to display the grace, justice, and faithfulness of God, to
whom that child belongs.
8
To clarify this concept, consider how God publicly maintained His glory (that is, His
reputation) in various narratives of the Old Testament. For instance, the drama of deliverance
from Egypt, which culminated in the miracle of the Red Sea, was carefully framed by YHWH so
that He would “be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his
horsemen” (Ex. 14:17–18).
9 The ten plagues that immediately and causally preceded the Red
Sea experience were so ordered and timed by YHWH that the Pharaoh gradually steeled himself
to Moses’ demands. All of which prepared the way for Pharoah’s command—a command as
militarily and spiritually stupid as any in history—that his chariot forces pursue the fleeing
Israelites across the miraculously dried up Red Sea. When Moses stretched out his hand over
the sea and the waters covered the Egyptians, God did indeed get glory upon Egypt. And He
answered the arrogant question posed by the Pharaoh some months earlier, “Who is this
YHWH that I should obey His voice to let Israel go?” (Ex. 5:2). In effect, by miraculously
delivering Israel from Egypt, YHWH confronted the world of that day, and of centuries to come,
with the indisputable evidence of His might and His character. (Compare the reaction of Rahab
in Joshua 2:9–14 and the flawed remembrance of the Red Sea evinced by the Philistines some
four hundred years later in 1 Samuel 4:8.)
Again, when the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive to Babylon, the name of
YHWH was in severe jeopardy of being dishonored. God had covenanted with Israel that if they
persevered in rebellion and disobedience He would cause them to be taken captive by a “nation
of fierce countenance” (Deut. 28:49–57; see 1 Kin. 8:46). And yet, given the universal
superstition of the time that if one nation were defeated by another it was because the gods of
the victorious nation were more powerful than those of the vanquished, God’s name was in
danger of being dishonored if He kept that promise of judgment upon His covenant people. But
God intervened to publicly preserve His glory through the man Daniel.
As a young man, Daniel was taken captive by King Nebuchadnezzar in the first stage of
Judah’s deportation to Babylon (about 605 B.C., see Daniel 1). Later, God enabled Daniel to
provide the content and interpretation of the Babylonian monarch’s dream, but only after all of
the king’s pagan soothsayers had confessed their absolute inability to do so (ch. 2). Thus YHWH
was publicly honored as Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged the power of the God worshiped by
Daniel and his friends (vv. 46–47).
Some decades later, the prophet interpreted another dream for the king. This time King
Nebuchadnezzar wrote a decree to be read throughout all the kingdom that told the story of his
own madness and thus honored Daniel’s God as “the Most High … who lives forever.” The
king’s decree concluded with this encomium of praise to YHWH.
For His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
And His kingdom endures from generation to generation.
And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand,
Or say to Him, “What hast Thou done?” (Dan. 4:34–35)
Thus did Nebuchadnezzar publicly and universally declare the glory of YHWH.
10
The historical examples from Scripture could be multiplied, but with these the point is
made: when YHWH insists He will not share His glory with another, He wants us to understand
not only that He possesses such personal majesty, but also that it is His sovereign will that His
majesty be publicly displayed. It is His concern and must be our concern.
Obedience and Fallenness
There are profound implications in this mandate to deliberately and publicly reflect the
God whom we serve. It means that the children of God are under scriptural obligation to see
themselves as vehicles of God’s glory, as mirrors with which the Sovereign of the universe has
chosen to reflect His glory, as conduits to display Him before a watching world. It is morally
imperative that believers frame their lives, order their priorities, fashion their relationships, and
discipline their souls in ways appropriate to this relationship and responsibility.
Of course, the infernal fly in the ointment is the fallenness of mankind. Although it is
cosmically appropriate for human creatures to content themselves with playing the moon to
the Creator’s sun and to be satisfied with the privilege of reflecting YHWH’s glory (even though
in so doing they are confessing that they have no glory of their own), people are not willing to
do so. Indeed, it is the stuff of fallenness to be offended by God’s claim that He alone is worthy
of honor, and instead to exalt oneself, to thrust oneself onto the throne of one’s private
universe. The Luciferian rebellion is reiterated moment by moment in the souls of the
unredeemed offspring of Adam when they, in effect, intone the most cardinal credo of
fallenness:
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High. (Is. 14:13–14)
11
It might be argued, in fact, that this proclivity to exalt self is the essence of sinfulness. As
Strong observed,
Sin, therefore, is not merely a negative thing, or an absence of love to God. It is a
fundamental and positive choice or preference of self instead of God, as the object of affection
and the supreme end of being. Instead of making God the centre of his life, surrendering
himself unconditionally to God and possessing himself only in subordination to God’s will, the
sinner makes himself the centre of his life, sets himself directly against God, and constitutes his
own interest the supreme motive and his own will the supreme rule.
12
This is the flesh that even in the believer sets its desire against the Spirit (Gal. 5:17); the
lofty thing that raises itself up against Christ (2 Cor. 10:5); and the old self that has been
corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit (Eph. 4:22).
It is in such a moral universe that biblical counselors must minister, indeed must
consciously conceive of themselves as ministering. On the one hand, the omnipotent Creator
and Sovereign of the universe demands that finite humans honor Him as such, and it is
altogether appropriate that He receive that honor. On the other hand, every fallen person,
whether unredeemed or redeemed, is possessed of an Adamic nature that longs to be like God,
that compels each one of us to usurp the place of honor and dominion that rightly belongs only
to God, despite the fact that it is altogether inappropriate that any person receive such honor.
God Alone Is God
By reason of these two factors, biblical counselors must constantly and consciously arm
their spirit, inform their instruction, and constrain their counselees with a commitment to
glorify God and God alone. Such a commitment will compel us to exult in the truth that God
alone is God, and to acknowledge joyfully that every creature of God is under sacred obligation
both to resist the temptation to exalt self and to honor God as God!
All of this might be more simply expressed in this short rendering: God is God, and I am
not! God alone is eternal; He knows the end from the beginning, and thus He is able to
comprehend exactly how all things will in fact “work together for good,” no matter how
distressing some of those things might seem to us (given that we can know only today, and that
but haltingly and partially). God alone is sovereign; we can depend on Him to order the affairs
of the moral universe so as to silence the great accuser of the brethren and to cause His
children to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. God alone is true
altogether; His word is life and light, and thus are we eternally well-advised to cast ourselves
entirely upon His promises and to find in His word (and in His word alone) all things that pertain
to life and godliness; even though we will be set upon from every quarter by theories and truth-
claims that contravene the Word of God and are so seductive as to be alluring almost beyond
resistance.
But God is God, and I am not! Therefore, God deserves to be honored, worshiped, trusted,
feared, and loved as God. Our responsibility and privilege is to glorify Him: to enhance His
reputation in the minds of rational creatures and to live our lives and order our days so that all
who encounter us will have a higher regard for God than they might have had they never
encountered us! But our besetting temptation is to glorify self: to live life as if we were the
center of the universe, as if the enhancement of our reputation were a meritorious pursuit, and
as if our contentment were the greatest good of the cosmos. That is why every believer must
continually be confronted with the demand that God be honored as God. And that is why
biblical counseling must be framed by a conscious, undeviating commitment to the glory of
God!
