Biblical Counseling Isn’t Therapy

“And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all” (1 Thess 5:14).

I know of no clearer mandate for biblical counseling in the Bible. In the closing words of Paul’s warm and affectionate letter to the Thessalonian church—one in which he celebrates the gospel coming to them in both word and power (1:5)—the apostle writes to ensure that the word of God continues to bear fruit in the lives of Christ’s people. While the verse doesn’t explicitly mention it, the context of the letter shows that God’s word is undoubtedly the means Paul has in mind for admonishing, encouraging, and helping.

Biblical counseling begins with loving attention to the needs of the people around us in the church—locating the idle, the fainthearted, and the weak. Biblical counseling then seeks to apply God’s word to those various situations by directing Spirit-filled people toward exchanging false beliefs and unrighteous attitudes and behaviors with truth and righteousness as revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Biblical counseling, in other words, seeks real life change in reliance on God’s grace. While it begins in conversation, the real arena of action is the counselee’s life outside the counseling room.

The arena for therapy, as it is popularly understood today, is the therapy session. Taking our cues from popular depictions of the therapist-client relationship, struggling people often seek therapy in search of a therapeutic breakthrough. We hope that the skilled guidance of a professional therapist will lead us to discover things about ourselves that we never knew or understood before. By exploring memories of past traumas, we anticipate uncovering the reasons for many of our present tendencies.

Somewhere along the way, modern therapeutic culture has adopted the belief that healing from emotional pain comes primarily through talking about it—from holding up our worst memories and failures and analyzing them from various angles, usually with the guidance of a trusted therapist, searching for any hint of a connection between present pain and past complex personal histories. In fact, you could even say that this belief drives the whole therapeutic industry, for the moment a patient no longer feels the need to talk through his or her problems is the moment continuing to see a therapist becomes unnecessary. The therapy session is the focal point of modern therapy.

I’m a pastor and biblical counselor. I am not a therapist. However, I’m sometimes mistaken for a therapist. I sometimes get the sense that struggling Christians set up meetings expecting to achieve therapy-informed outcomes. They hear “biblical counseling” but think “talk therapy based on the Bible.” I can usually discern this expectation within a few sessions when the person I’m counseling shows little motivation for replacing old habits with the habits of grace the Bible recommends. It quickly becomes apparent when someone is putting too much emphasis on the counseling session and not nearly enough on changing their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in reliance on Christ between meetings.

Biblical counseling and talk therapy differ in at least four ways. First, and most significantly, biblical counseling relies on supernatural grace and seeks to point Spirit-filled people to live in a manner consistent with who they now are in Christ. While therapy as common grace may help people understand their problems better and point them to beneficial solutions, its spiritual vacuity limits its potential for genuine heart change. For the Christian, therapy may help, but therapy is never sufficient. The Spirit-filled believer must seek change beyond the superficial because Christ has died to make genuine inner transformation possible.

Second, biblical counseling explores the past but doesn’t dwell there. The biblical counselor’s goal is always present life change that will last well into the future. While talk therapy often ruminates on the past, the wise counselor seeks to strike the right balance between necessary self-examination and formulating an action plan that prevents the kind of unhealthy introspection that so often keeps patients stuck. We follow Paul in “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:13). Because of Christ, we are never stuck in our personal histories. The cross and resurrection means that nothing can hold us in bondage—not even past trauma. We are free to live as God calls us in dependence on God’s grace.

Third, biblical counseling relies on the supernatural means of grace, while therapy only has access to common grace means. The primary tools in the toolbox of the biblical counselor are prayer, God’s word, and the fellowship of the church.  While medicinal prescriptions may be necessary, the biblical counselor is not qualified to make that assessment. Instead, we point suffering people to the comforts of the cross.

Fourth, biblical counseling seeks to motivate the counselee to pursue change outside of the counseling session, while therapy often overcentralizes the therapy session itself. The biblical counselor heeds James’s warning by leading believers to be doers instead of merely hearers of the word (Jam 1:22) and reminds the Spirit-filled person that he or she has already been granted everything that pertains to life and godliness in Christ (2 Pet 1:3). Our task involves leading fellow heirs of grace to discover the full riches of resources that Christ has already won for them. As you can see, biblical counseling isn’t therapy.

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