A Theology of Biblical Counseling: The Doctrinal Foundations of Counseling Ministry
Theology is often considered irrelevant to everyday living. Many assume there is a wall of
division between a cognitive discipline like theology, and the typical needs one faces in day to
day operations of life. However, there are a number of thinkers that have demonstrated this is not
the case, that in fact theology is eminently practical. Heath Lambert is one of the most recent to
show that theology is connected to reality and needful to face life’s challenges.
Heath Lambert serves as the Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical
Counselors (ACBC, formerly known as the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors). He
also serves as a pastor at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, FL and a faculty member at The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
As the Executive Director of ACBC, Lambert’s convictions about counseling should be evident.
He believes that the “Bible tells us everything we need to know from God about any topic” (p.
48). That conviction may be a bit hard to swallow in an age of exponential information
advancement. But Lambert carefully and compellingly argues that much of what society views as
necessary knowledge to the counseling process is really not necessary. For, in Lambert’s view,
counseling is a conversation regarding the exchange of wisdom, God’s view of reality, for those
seeking answers. Although information about neuroscience and inner brain function is available
to our society today, these resources are not necessary or relevant for those seeking God’s
perspective on the issues of life.
Lambert has organized A Theology of Biblical Counseling around how biblical counseling relates
to the classic systematic theological disciplines of bibliopoly, theology proper, Christology,
pneumatology, anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology and ecclesiology. He also includes a
section specifically on biblical counseling and suffering. Approaching the topic in this way
demonstrates Lambert’s belief that counseling is at its root a theological endeavor.
One of the book’s highlights is the inclusion in each chapter of a difficult counseling case study.
For example, when considering biblical counseling and the doctrine of the church, Lambert
details a reality-based example of an individual enslaved to pornography. He then proceeds to
develop the doctrine of the church specifically in regard to what God had intended church
eldership and church community to be. As an experienced counselor, he skillfully brings to bear
how God’s plan for a redeemed community is to be ministering to the pornography enslaved
individual.
The book’s three appendices contain ACBC’s statement on mental disorders and medicine,
Lambert’s treatment of general revelation and common grace, and ACBC’s standards of
doctrine.
Lambert has produced a very readable, logical, practical, and compelling work that should
stimulate Christians in the counseling field to consider how the Scriptures give the theological
foundation for wisdom in all of life. This book is not a topical reference book for counseling, nor
is it an updated version of Jay Adams’s Christian Counselor’s Manual (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1986) or his A Theology of Christian Counseling (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).
Lambert has not written an academic systematic theology, or a counseling methodology book of
biblical counseling such as Paul Tripp’s Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands (Phillipsburg, NJ:
P&R Publishing, 2002). Instead, Lambert invites the reader to consider how counseling is a
theological enterprise. In accordance with the way he counseling as a “conversation” between
those with life questions and those with answers, his book also feels like a conversation with the
reader.
A Theology of Biblical Counseling is a very helpful and unique resource that will complement
the growing biblical counseling movement that is calling for soul care to be placed back in the
realm of the local church. Every pastor should engage the “conversation” Lambert’s book offers
and should lead his congregation to enter the conversation as well.
Biblical Theology and Counseling
What is the connection between biblical theology and counseling in the local church? Perhaps at
first glance you might say, not much!
Why? When you hear “biblical theology,” you tend to think of overarching categories such as
creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. You think in terms of major biblical themes such
as sin, suffering, exodus, sacrifice, law, kingdom, and exile, and how they develop in Scripture
over the course of redemptive history. When you hear “counseling,” what comes to mind are
topics such as interpersonal ministry, conversation, discipleship, personal struggles, and crisis.
You see specific names and faces.
Biblical theology, as edifying and important as it is, can seem a bit abstract compared to the
concrete, flesh-and-blood realities of life on the street this side of glory. But I would argue the
two are intimately related. Their interrelationship provides the foundation to carry out a truthful,
wise, and contextually relevant counseling ministry in the church.
The great biblical theologian Geerhardus Vos said, “All that God disclosed of Himself has come
in response to the practical religious needs of His people as these emerged in the course of
history.”[1] This means the Scriptures come to us jam-packed with relevance for problems in
living. The Bible not only gives us biblical theology, but is in fact,Gpracticaltheology.[2]
Scripture and life are intertwined!
What is the best way to highlight their interconnection in one-on-one ministry situations?
I find the concept of narrative or story particularly useful. This is true whether we are reading
Scripture or “reading” (listening to and seeking to understand) people. We must read the Bible as
one true story centering on the coming of Jesus Christ and his renewing rule. All bits and pieces
of Scripture fit into that larger narrative.[3] But to apply Scripture to our contemporary lives we
must also discern how the bits and pieces of the stories of people’s lives cohere, or don’t cohere,
with the biblical drama.
A way to speak of the storied quality of human life is to affirm that all people ask and answer
four foundational questions about the nature of life, whether consciously or not:
1. Where are we? What is the nature of the world in which we live?
2. Who are we? What is the essential nature of human beings?
3. What’s wrong? Why is the world—and my life—in such a mess?
4. What’s the remedy? How can these problems be solved?[4]
These questions—and how we answer them—form the narrative backbone of our lives. They
shape the way we interpret life events, from the mundane to the horrific. They shape our view of
ourselves and others. They shape our vision of what constitutes a meaningful life, even a
meaningful moment. They shape our beliefs, emotions, and decisions every day. Everybody has
an overarching story he or she lives moment by moment. Everybody is a meaning maker with
categories for making sense of life. The question is this: what story, what narrative, will we use
to see our world and interpret our lives?
And this is where biblical theology hits the street! The unfolding biblical narrative given to us in
Genesis to Revelation answers the preceding questions and orients us toward true reality if we
have ears to hear.
Where are we?In God’s good world. (Gen. 1-2).
Who are we?God’s image-bearers, created to bear his likeness, bringing his good and wise rule
to the ends of the earth (Gen. 1:26-27).
What’s wrong?We have chosen to live autonomously, by story lines of our own creation. We
have exchanged the worship of the Creator for worship of created things (Gen. 3; Rom. 1:25).
What’s the remedy?Redemption, initiated in Israel’s history and completed by Jesus Christ, who
“comes to make his blessings flow / far as the curse is found.”
Every time you yell at your kids, or assume the worst about someone, or cut someone off in
traffic in your rush to the office, or escape to internet pornography you show what you’re living
for in that moment. You show the self-absorbed story lines that have captured you.
Counseling ministry helps others recognize the aberrant plot lines by which they are living and
seeks to reconnect them, by the Spirit’s enablement, to the life-giving story of Jesus Christ. Just
as Jesus helped the discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus understand how the details of
the Old Testament pointed to him, we help others understand where the details of their lives
point. We celebrate when they are in line with the gospel story. We gently correct and restore
when they are out of line with the gospel story.
The Bible is not meant to be studied apart from its application to life, and counseling is not
meant to be practiced apart from its foundation in the story of Scripture. In this way biblical
theology and counseling are inexorably linked.
Editor’s note:This article is adapted fromCrossTalk: Where Life and Scripture Meet(New
Growth Press, 2009) with the kind permission of the publisher.
[1]GBiblical Theology: Old and New Testaments(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948; reprint,
Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 9.
[2] David Powlison, “Counsel Ephesians,”GThe Journal of Biblical Counseling17:2 (1999).
[3] See how Jesus sums up the focus of the Hebrew Scriptures in Luke 24:44-47.
[4] Brian Walsh and J. Richard Middleton,GThe Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World
View(Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1984), 35.
