Fully Biblical, Biblical Counseling

A number of years ago, I crafted a series of blog posts focused on Half Biblical Biblical Counseling. In those posts, I emphasized the Bible’s call on biblical counselors to:

• Highlight not only truth, but truth and love, Scripture and soul/relationship: Ephesians 4:15-16; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 2:8.
• Highlight not only confrontation of sin (nouthetic care), but to address sin and suffering—comforting/encouragement for suffering (parakaletic care): 2 Corinthians 1:3-11; 1 Corinthians 12:26; Romans 12:15. 

In the years since those posts, we’ve witness a significant increase in the number of articles, blog posts, chapters, books, seminar sessions, training seminars, and courses in the biblical counseling world that are focusing on truth and love and also on sin and suffering. That’s very encouraging! That’s movement toward fully biblically biblical counseling.

Half Biblical Biblical Sufferology

“Sufferology” is the term I use to describe a biblical theology of suffering—a biblical approach to helping hurting people find hope in Christ. Because I’ve done a lot of work in sufferology, recently I was asked to provide feedback on some yet-to-be-published material on suffering from a biblical counseling perspective.

While I could provide positive feedback on some of the exegetical work, overall, my feedback was more critical. It was my assessment that the approach highlighted a half biblical model of biblical sufferology.

Here’s the premise of the material: when the human counselor seeks to identify with the suffering counselee, the counseling subtly shifts the counselee’s dependence from Christ to the skill of the counselor. The same premise was hammered again and again throughout the material: don’t focus on identifying with the sufferer; focus on directing the sufferer to God’s design for their suffering.

That is an unbiblical/half biblical approach to ministering to the suffering that creates a false either/or dilemma.

• False: Either the human counselor cares like Christ or the human counselor points people to Christ’s care.
• False: Either the human counselor identifies with their counselee or the human counselor helps their counselee identify with Christ’s purposes in suffering.
• False: Either the human counselor seeks to express loving compassion or the human counselor points the counselee to Christ’s compassion.

Biblically, there is no either/or. Fully biblical counseling for suffering is both/and.

• True: God calls us both to care like Christ and to point people to Christ’s care. That’s the message of 2 Corinthians 1:3-5. From the overflow of Christ’s comfort in our lives, we offer Christ’s comfort to one another that points one another to Christ.
• True: God calls us both to identify with our counselee in their earthly story of suffering and to help one another to identify with Christ and with His eternal gospel story (purposes in suffering). That’s the pattern of Romans 8:17-39. Paul not only points people to the truth that God works all things together for good. Paul also identifies with people in their suffering, moaning, and groaning (Romans 8:17-27).
• True: God calls us both to express loving compassion and to point one another to Christ’s compassion. That’s Paul’s pattern in 1 Thessalonians 2 where he loves and cares so deeply for his brothers and sisters in Christ that he not only shares the Scripture but also his very own soul—by encouraging and comforting them as a father and by expressing the compassion of a mother. 

Fully Biblical Biblical Sufferology

I’ve attempted to develop my “sufferology” from a cover-to-cover study of what the Bible says about suffering. I’ve also developed my approach from an intensive and extensive study of church history—examining how the Church Fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans, believers in Black Church history, women in church history, and many others have ministered biblically to the hurting.

From my study of Scripture and church history, I believe that fully biblically biblical sufferology includes both biblical sustaining comfort and biblical healing encouragement.

Biblical Sustaining Comfort: Weeping with Those Who Weep; Suffering with Those Who Suffering—“It’s Normal to Hurt” 

The gospel foundation of biblical sustaining is the truth that the Christ of the Cross understands our suffering.

Christ is the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). When we are distressed; God, too, is distressed (Isaiah 63:9). Jesus wept (John 11:35). We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin. So we can approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16).

The gospel focus of sustaining care is our calling to enter into, empathize with, and embrace one another in the suffering that comes from our earthly story of life in a fallen, broken world.

God calls us to comfort one another with the same comfort we have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-5). God calls us to identify with one another in suffering, lost, pain, and grief (2 Corinthians 1:7-9). God calls us to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). God calls us to suffer with—sympathos—to share in and to enter into the pain, agony, and suffering of another person. This is participatory suffering where we embrace the other person in their pain to the point of experiencing their pain (1 Corinthians 12:26).

Biblical counseling for suffering never stops at sustaining. However, there is nothing unbiblical about sustaining. There is nothing in sustaining that minimizes the calling to point people to the ultimate Sustainer—Christ. In fact, biblically, God commands us to embody Christlike care in love and compassion, not simply to preach truth without a heart of compassionate love and care (1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Ephesians 4:15-16; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 2:8).

Biblical Healing Encouragement: Journeying with People to Face Suffering Face-to-Face with Christ—“It’s Possible to Hope” 

Biblical counseling for suffering always blends sustaining comfort with healing encouragement. In healing encouragement we not only point people to Christ’s purposes in suffering. We point people to Christ! We encourage people to face their suffering face-to-face with Christ through the Spirit of God, the Word of God, and the people of God.

The gospel foundation of biblical healing is the truth that the resurrected Christ provides eternal hope in our suffering.

Paul did not want the Corinthians to be ignorant about his suffering. He felt the sentence of death and despaired of life. He longed for the Corinthians to “climb in the casket with him” by identifying with him in his earthly suffering (2 Corinthians 1:3-9).

But Paul did not stop there. He longed for the Corinthians to pray for him and to minister to him so that he would be encouraged not to depend on himself, not to depend on them, but to depend upon God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:9-11). We not only climb in the casket with suffering people; we also celebrate the resurrection! We celebrate the empty tomb by pointing people to the resurrected Savior!

The gospel focus of biblical healing is our calling to stretch people to God’s eternal story of hope where we encourage suffering people to embrace the God of hope.

Proverbs repeatedly teaches us to listen before we speak. When we listen well to people’s earthly story of pain, then we can apply biblical counsel accurately, relationally, lovingly, specifically, and individually to their life.

Paul repeatedly teaches us to speak truth in loving compassion. When we join with people in their suffering, we gain the biblical and relational right to ask them to listen together with us to God’s eternal story of healing and hope. Caring spiritual friends point people to the ultimate Spiritual Friend—Jesus.

The Rest of the Story 

Fully biblical biblical sufferology is so important to me, and to our calling as biblical counselors, that today is the first of several posts on this topic. In our next post, I want to ponder what happens when biblical counselors attempt to speak truth without loving compassion. We’ll explore 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 Thessalonians 8 to uncover the biblical result of truth spoken without love.

Join the Conversation 

In your life, have you experienced someone who sought to preach truth to your suffering heart without also suffering with you? What was the result?

In your ministry, how do you:

• Combine truth and love?
• Combine offering comforting care and pointing people to Christ’s care?
• Combine climbing in the casket and celebrating the resurrection?
• Combine grieving and suffering with people and pointing people to the Savior who is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief?