A Word from Bob
I’m drawing these quotes from Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives.
You can download all thirty-six quotes for free as a PDF here: 3 Dozen Quotes of Note from Gospel-Centered Counseling.
I recently re-introduced Gospel-Centered Counseling here: 10 Major Bible Doctrines Applied to Biblical Counseling: A Theology of Biblical Counseling.
36 Quotes on Theologically-Saturated Biblical Counseling
- The biblical counselor’s fundamental question is: “What would a model of biblical counseling look like that was built solely upon Christ’s gospel of grace?”
- If we are to view the Bible accurately and use the Bible competently, then we must understand the Bible’s story the way God tells it—as a gospel victory narrative.
- Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but Christ.
- Wise living from God’s perspective is not “Sunday living;” it emphasizes practical reality 24/7.
- God has given us in His Son, His Word, His Spirit, and His Church all things we need to live sanely in this insane world in light of the world to come.
- We discover wisdom for how to live life in a broken world from the wisest person who ever lived—Christ!
- What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
- We must know the Trinitarian Soul Physician personally to be a powerful soul physician.
- Because Satan attempts to plant seeds of doubt about God’s good heart, God calls us to crop Christ back into the picture.
- The goal of biblical counseling is to help the whole person to become a whole person in Christ.
- Our goal is not simply symptom relief, but Christlikeness. We are not solution-focused; we are soul-u-tion-focused.
- Biblical counselors must deal thoroughly both with the sins we have committed and with the evils we have suffered.
- We move far from God when we think little of God. The essence of sin is the belittling of God’s glory.
- Satan’s seduction always comes in the form of a story offering us “godness,” by lessening God’s goodness.
- 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.
- Powerful biblical counselors admit their own powerlessness.
- The world is fallen and it often falls on us. The world is a mess and it often messes with our minds.
- How do people change? Not through our own power, but through tapping into Christ’s resurrection power that has already changed us and is always available to us.
- Justification: “To your sin and condemnation, the gospel says, ‘Not guilty! Forgiven!’”
- Reconciliation: “To your lostness and aloneness, the gospel says, ‘You are accepted. Adopted. You are family—sons and daughters. Welcome home!’”
- Regeneration: “To your fallenness and heart of stone, the gospel says, ‘You’re a new creation in Christ. Saints!’”
- Redemption: “To your enslavement to sin and defeat at the hands of the world, the flesh, and the devil, the gospel says, ‘You are more than conquerors through Christ. Victors!’”
- Salvation and Suffering: “To your deep grief, the gospel says, ‘Mourning does not have the final word. Healing does. Joy does.’”
- As bad as our trials are, the worst trial is our trial of faith—the temptation to give up on Christ and to give in to sin. Trials and temptations bring us to a faith point.
- I fear that some of the counseling we do is old covenant counseling. We counsel Christians as though they are still non-Christians—old creations instead of new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
- I fear that too much Christian living is old covenant living. We consume ourselves with trying to become what we already are, while our present task is to be what we already are.
- To grow in Christ we need to understand and apply who we already are in Christ.
- Through regeneration our new heart has a new want to; through redemption our new heart has a new can do.
- Growth in grace is a community project.
- Christ’s grand plan for His church is for pastors/teachers to focus on equipping every member to do the work of the ministry.
- A church is a community of gifted people, not merely a community of people with a gifted pastor. The pastor’s calling is to help God’s people to fulfill their calling.
- Christ’s grand plan for His church is for every member to be a disciple-maker by speaking and living gospel truth to one another in love.
- The first duty of a biblical counselor is to define reality—eternal reality past, present, and future.
- We must not sit down to counsel hurting people if we haven’t been sitting at the feet of the Wonderful Counselor.
- Sanctification is not simply the art of getting used to our justification. Sanctification is the art of applying our justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption.
