In Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives, I address 8 Ultimate Life Questions. These are the 8 questions that every biblical counselor—and every Christian—must ponder. These 8 ultimate life questions cover the classical 10 systematic theology doctrines—explaining how these truths relate relevantly to our lives and ministries.
In Gospel-Centered Counseling, I provide chapter-long answers to each question. And at the end of each chapter, I offer tweet-size summaries of each chapter answer. Here they are…both the questions and the tweet-size answers.
A Tweet-Size Summary of the Question Addressed in Gospel-Centered Counseling
“What would a model of biblical counseling look like that was built solely upon Christ’s gospel of grace?”
A Tweet-Size Summary Answer
In biblical counseling, we help each other to learn how to live life today in light of Christ’s gospel victory.
8 Ultimate Life Questions
Question 1: The Word—“Where do we find wisdom for life in a broken world?”
Chapter 1: Tweet-size Summary
- To view the Bible accurately and use the Bible competently we must understand the Bible’s story the way God tells it—as a gospel victory narrative.
Chapter 2: Tweet-size Summaries
- The supremacy of Christ’s gospel, the sufficiency of Christ’s wisdom, and the superiority of Christ’s Church provide the wisdom we need for counseling in a broken world.
- We discover wisdom for how to live life in a broken world from the wisest person who ever lived—Christ!
Question 2: The Trinity/Community—“What comes into our mind when we think about God?” “Whose view of God will we believe—Christ’s or Satan’s?”
Chapter 3: Tweet-size Summary
- We must know the Trinitarian Soul Physician personally to be a powerful soul physician.
Chapter 4: Tweet-size Summary
- To know the God of peace and the peace of God we must know our Triune God in the fullness of His holy love demonstrated in the cross of Christ.
Chapter 5: Tweet-size Summary
- Because Satan attempts to plant seeds of doubt about God’s good heart, God calls us to crop the Christ of the cross back into the picture.
Question 3: Creation—“Whose are we?” “In what story do we find ourselves?”
Chapter 6: Tweet-size Summary
- The whole, healthy, holy person’s inner life increasingly reflects the inner life of Christ—relationally, rationally, volitionally, and emotionally.
Chapter 7: Tweet-size Summaries
- Theology matters.
- Understanding people biblically matters.
- Biblical counselors pursue compassionate and wise counseling where our love abounds in depth of knowledge about the heart in the world.
Question 4: Fall—“What’s the root source of our problem?” “What went wrong?”
Chapter 8: Tweet-size Summaries
- The essence of sin is spiritual adultery—choosing to love anyone or anything more than God.
- Sin is not just a thief caught in a crime; sin is an adulterer caught in the act.
Chapter 9: Tweet-size Summaries
- Apart from Christ we’re condemned as adulterous spouses, dead in sin, separated from the life of God with depraved heart capacities enslaved to sin.
- Sin is what personal beings imagine, think, choose, do, and feel as they desire and love anything or anyone more than Christ.
Chapter 10: Tweet-size Summary
- Fully biblical gospel-centered counseling deals thoroughly both with the sins we have committed and with the evils we have suffered.
Question 5: Redemption—“How does Christ bring us peace with God?” “How does Christ change people?”
Chapter 11: Tweet-size Summary
- We must build our biblical counseling models of change on Christ’s gospel applied to Christians—justified, reconciled, regenerated, and redeemed people.
Chapter 12: Tweet-size Summary
- Through regeneration our new heart has a new want to; through redemption our new heart has a new can do.
Question 6: Church—“Where can we find a place to belong and become?”
Chapter 13: Tweet-size Summary
- Together with all the saints the church is the place to belong to Christ and the Body of Christ and to become like Christ.
- Sanctification is a community journey.
Question 7: Consummation—“How does our future destiny with Christ make a difference in our lives today as saints who struggle against suffering and sin?”
Chapter 14: Tweet-size Summary
- As saints who struggle with suffering and sin, we must crop back into the picture our future purity (the wedding) and future victory (the final war).
Question 8: Sanctification—“Why are we here?” “How do we become like Jesus?” How can our inner life increasingly reflect the inner life of Christ?
Chapter 15: Tweet-size Summary
- Sanctification is the art of applying our complete salvation by God’s grace, Spirit, Word, people, and future hope so we increasingly reflect Christ.
Chapter 16: Tweet-size Summary
- Gospel-motivated/empowered heart change puts off/puts on affections, mindsets, purposes, and mood states so we increasingly reflect the heart of Christ.
Free Resource from Gospel-Centered Counseling
You can download free resources from Gospel-Centered Counseling here, including a free 52-page PDF: Gospel-Centered Counseling: Discussion Guide. This free discussion guide is great for individual use, but even more helpful for group interaction and classroom lecture/discussion.
Join the Conversation
What would your tweet-size answer be to each of life’s 8 ultimate questions?
