Why We Must Embed Counseling in the Church

Why We Must Embed Counseling in the Church

There are a multitude of reasons why we must embed counseling in the church. Yesterday, our pastor preached on Ephesians 3. His message was not focused on “counseling,” yet I saw tremendous implications for counseling and the church. Here are two that relate to wisdom and love.

1. God Intends Us to Discover and Share His Manifold Wisdom within and through the Church: Ephesians 3:7-13

It has been God’s purpose from all eternity that through the church the manifold wisdom of God should be made known. It has been said that the church is the greatest superpower on earth. This passage is saying that the church is the greatest repository of wisdom on earth. The church is the ultimate place where God wants to demonstrate His infinite, multifaceted, all-encompassing wisdom for living—for this life and the life to come.

Paul says something quite similar in Philippians 1:9-11 when he prays that our love would abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. Paul wants our love to be wisdom-saturated so that:

• We may be able to discern what is best

• We may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ

• We may be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from Christ

• We may, in so living, bring glory and praise to God.

Are those not the identical goals of the counselor and of counseling? Don’t we want to know and to help others to know what is best—not just what is good?

Don’t we want to be and to help others to be pure and blameless—to live for God and others in this life as we move toward the life to come?

Don’t we want to be and help others to be filed with Christlikeness and the fruit of the Spirit—even as we/they face suffering, deal with the impact of sin, and find power to overcome besetting sins?

Don’t we have as our ultimate goal encouraging one another to bring God glory as we face life’s troubles and trials?

Yes, Ephesians 3 is talking about the entire cosmos becoming aware of the beautiful wisdom of God’s Gospel of grace, of God’s eternal plan in Christ. But we shrink the implications of that plan if we imagine that it has to do only with the life to come and not also with the life we live now.

The church demonstrates the manifold wisdom of God today to an on-looking cosmos by sharing wisdom with one-another so that our lives display what happens when people live according to God’s eternal wisdom. That ought to be the ultimate goal of counseling that is truly Christian and truly biblical. The ultimate context for such Gospel-centered counseling is the church.

2. God Intends Us to Discover and Share His All-Surpassing Love within and through the Church: Ephesians 3:14-21

What do suffering, struggling, and sinning people (like all of us) need? We need truth—we need God’s manifold wisdom displayed in Christ. We also need love. Where do we grasp, truly grasp and apply to our lives and ministries, the love of God in Christ?

Another of Paul’s prayers answers this life-altering question. “I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and how high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-19).

And for what purpose? Again, so that our lives change for the glory of Christ. We grasp together God’s love so that we may be filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19). We grasp together God’s love so that our lives will bring glory to Christ in the church for ever (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Are those not the identical goals of counseling and the counselor? Isn’t our ultimate goal to help one another, regardless of what suffering, struggles, and besetting sins we are facing, to become more like Christ and to bring greater glory to Christ?

None of that minimizes helping people with “symptoms.” None of that minimizes our empathy for people in their hurts, their hard times, or their hardness. Instead, it emphasizes the truth that ultimately we are not solution-focused. We are SOUL-u-tion-focused—focused on matters of the soul, on the depths of the heart, on daily issues with eternal implications.

What Paul highlights in Ephesians 3, he elaborates on in Ephesians 4. It is God’s calling that church leaders equip His people (Ephesians 4:11-14). Equip them for what task and for what purpose?

The task: equip God’s people to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4;15). Every church is to assure that every believer is equipped to speak and live (to embody) God’s truth in love. Interesting. Truth and love—wisdom and love—the focal points of Ephesians 3:7-13 and of Ephesians 3:14-21. Local church equipping equips God’s people to grasp and reveal the manifold wisdom of God and the all-surpassing love of Christ.

The purpose: so that in all things we will grow up in him who is the Head, that is, Christ (Ephesians 4:15). We speak and live truth and live to one another in the church so that we can grow up in Christ in all things—in our struggles with perplexing concerns such as anxiety and depression and in our struggles against besetting sins such as anger and lust. In all things. Our purpose is sanctification (growth in grace, growth in Christlikeness) in all things.

Here’s my premise in a sentence:

The church is the greatest repository for the manifold wisdom of God and the all-surpassing love of Christ that are necessary for counseling that empowers one another to live wise and loving lives today to the glory of Christ.

Join the Conversation

Is there any place, any institution, any organization, any living organism like the church that can offer the context for grasping and revealing Christ’s life-altering wisdom and love?