We once knew how to relate God’s truth to human relationships. Then, as if an evil spell had been cast upon the Church, we abdicated our calling, allowing it to be abducted by aliens. These aliens, separated from the life of God, claimed the mantle of relevancy, built great soulless ‘soul physician’ schools, and proceeded to prescribe cures for soul sickness. Meanwhile, vanquished, we erected academies that dissected God’s truth, but ignored human relationships.

As Christian counselors, we must return to our heritage as students both of the Scripture and of the soul. This call is not new. The Church has always ministered to hurting and hardened people. However, recently we’ve experienced a radical shift. We’ve lost our confidence in the relevancy and potency of Christ’s gospel of grace.

Faced with an urgency for some system by which to conceptualize the human condition and to deal with the modern grandeurs and terrors of the human spirit, theoreticians of the cure of souls have too readily adopted the leading academic psychologies. Having no pastoral theology to inform our psychology or even to identify the cure of souls as a mode of human helping, we have allowed psychoanalytic thought, for example, to dominate the vocabulary of the spirit.1

Past generations crafted their counseling models from pastoral theology—a biblical theology that produced practical methods to relate God’s truth to human life. Today we tend to borrow counseling models from our secular society, and often without serious reflection on the consequences of doing so. Christian Counselor is always available to help you out.

We’ve lost the trail of those who journeyed before us. They blazed their trail with the words “Truth and Love.” Our predecessors followed a thoughtful biblical theology and a loving pastoral methodology. We tend to wander off one path or the other. Some of us are very loving; we relate well to people, but we don’t truth for life adequately relate God’s truth to people’s lives. Others of us are quite truth-oriented; we know a lot about God, but we don’t adequately know how to relate His Word to our world. It is time for us to rediscover our way. It is time for us to fulfill the Apostle Paul’s prayer.

_And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11)_.

Paul’s excited. It is as if he says, “I’m praying that your love very much exceedingly spills over!” The word that he uses for “abound” relates to the word for the abundance remaining after Christ fed the 5,000. It speaks of liberality, lavishness, overabundance, and spoiling. Theologically informed Christian counselors spoil others with God’s love.  How? Through full knowledge and depth of insight. “Full knowledge” pictures noticing attentively, fully perceiving, observing, discerning, and discovering. Theologically informed Christian counselors diligently dig to uncover the buried treasure of truth found in God’s Word.

“Depth of insight” suggests the experiential use of wisdom—knowledge applied to life. Such “spiritual theology” allows us to “spend” our theological treasure wisely. Theologically informed Christian counselors share Christ’s changeless truth to change people’s lives. Love is not enough. Truth is not enough. Love and truth must kiss. When our love abounds in depth of insight, then we are able to discern what is best so that our lives are pure and our ministries are fruitful. The result is Christian counseling that is, as Paul says it, “to the glory and praise of God.”

_Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, is Chairman of the Master of Arts in Christian Counseling and Discipleship Department at Capital Bible Seminary, Founder of RPM Ministries, and author of Soul Physicians and Spiritual Friends. He has pastored three churches and serves as AACC’s Director of Theology and Pastoral Counseling, and as Director of the AACC’s Religious Leaders Division._Footnotes1 William Clebsch and Charles Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective (New York: Harper, 1964), xii.