A Word from Bob: On September 15, 2020, Baker Books released my two-book series:
Today’s blog post focuses on a central theme of Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling:
Marriage counseling is not just individual counseling with an audience.
Our Typical Training in Marriage Counseling
Here’s how most of us are trained as marriage counselors:
- We learn a biblical theology of a mature marriage.
- We learn a biblical methodology of individual biblical counseling.
Our Typical Practice of Marriage Counseling
So what do we then typically do when a couple sits in front of us?
- We teach them a biblical theology of a mature marriage.
- While the wife listens, we counsel the husband to get his act together.
- While the husband listens, we counsel the wife to get her act together.
Now, is a biblical theology of a mature marriage essential? Of course.
Is individual counseling with the husband and then with the wife helpful. Sure.
But is that biblical marriage counseling?
And, is it discipleship?
Or, are we giving a husband and a wife a fish instead of discipling a husband and wife to fish?
In other words, if we just teach to and talk at each spouse while the other spouse listens in—that’s giving them a fish. That’s “individual counseling with an audience.”
But when we equip a husband and wife by empowering them to explore and apply the Scriptures humbly, lovingly, and jointly to their marital relationship—that’s discipling them to fish the Scriptures. That’s biblical marriage counseling.
Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding in Marriage Counseling
In Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ, I seek to equip biblical counselors with nearly two dozen biblical counseling skills (relational competencies) for individual counseling. I group these counseling competencies around four “compass points” from Scripture and church history:
- Sustaining: “It’s normal to hurt.” Learning how to empathize with and bring biblical comfort to a hurting, suffering counselee.
- Healing: “It’s possible to hope.” Learning how to encourage and bringing biblical hope to a hurting, suffering counselee.
- Reconciling: “It’s horrible to sin, but wonderful to be forgiven.” Learning how to lovingly, graciously, and humbly expose sin and dispense Christ’s grace.
- Guiding: “It’s supernatural to mature.” Learning how to equip and empower counselees to grow in their love for God and others.
In this approach to individual counseling, it’s vital that the counselor empathize with the counselee, encourage the counselee, speak truth in love to the counselee, and equip and empower the counselee.
However, if that’s my primary focus in marriage counseling, the husband and wife might think I’m wonderful, while still struggling mightily with each other. Imagine this scenario. A hurting wife hears me confront her husband and experiences me bringing God’s comfort to her. If that’s all I do, she might think or say to her husband:
“Why can’t you be understanding and helpful like Pastor Bob!?”
So, what do we do instead? While I still may empathize with either spouse and still may confront either spouse:
The central competency in marriage counseling is to equip spouses to be each other’s loving biblical counselor.
We don’t just provide individual soul care to a husband and a wife. We equip a husband and a wife to provide soul care for each other.
Contrast what we read before about individual counseling with this portrait of marriage counseling:
- Sustaining: “Like Christ, We Care about Each Other’s Hurts”
- Healing: “Through Christ, It’s Possible for Us to Hope in God Together”
- Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin Against Christ and Each Other, but Through Christ It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven and to Forgive”
- Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Love Each Other Like Christ, Through Christ, for Christ”
Think about the first area—marital sustaining. Picture a couple coming to you angry with and hurt by each other. Now imagine that over time you could help that hurting husband to face the log in his own eye, look at the pain in his wife’s heart, and say to his wife with maturity and compassion:
“I am so sorry for the hurt I’ve been causing you. I really am now, for the first time, sensing your pain—that I’ve been responsible for. I ache with you. Please forgive me. Please help me to better understand how I’ve let you down, sinned against you, and harmed you…”
By God’s grace, when you help a couple move to that point you can begin to transition toward wrapping up your counseling with them because they are now each other’s best biblical counselor.
That’s the gist of Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling—empowering couples to “couple”—to connect in Christ, through Christ, and like Christ.
22 Biblical Marriage Counseling Skills (Relational Competencies)
How do we grow as biblical marriage counselors? Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling walks us through 22 biblical marriage counseling skills that equip and empower couples. Here they are in outline form:
Infusing Hope
- H: Having Hope as a Marriage Counselor
- O: Offering Hope to Hurting Couples
- P: Promoting God’s Perspective
- E: Enlightening Couples
Sustaining: “Like Christ, We Care about Each Other’s Hurts”
- C: Coupling with the Couple
- A: Assisting the Couple to Become Intimate Allies
- R: Renewing the Couple’s Trust in the Father of Compassion
- E: Engaging the Couple through Empathetic Encouragement
Healing: “Through Christ, It’s Possible for Us to Hope in God Together”
- F: Fighting Satan’s Lying and Condemning Earthly Narrative
- A: Applying Christ’s Truth and Grace Eternal Narrative
- I: Inviting Couples to Crop the Life of Christ into Their Marital Life
- T: Trialoguing About Christ’s Truth and Grace Eternal Narrative
- H: Healing Individually and Together in Christ
Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin Against Christ and Each Other, but Through Christ It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven and to Forgive”
- P: Probing Theologically
- E: Exposing Marital Heart Sins
- A: Applying Truth Relationally
- C: Calming the Conscience with Grace
- E: Enlightening Couples About Biblical Marital Reconciliation
Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Love Each Other Like Christ, Through Christ, for Christ”
- L: Leaving the Past Behind
- O: Ongoing Gospel Growth
- V: Victorious Together Through Christ
- E: Exalting Christ Together
Join the Conversation
Which approach to biblical marriage counseling were you taught? Was it individual counseling with an audience? Or, was it equipping spouses to be each other’s loving biblical counselor?
