Powlison on Whether Sanctification Is Only by Remembering Justification

There are few people whose writing on sanctification I find more valuable and insightful than David Powlison’s. His latest essay for The Journal of Biblical Counseling (27:1), “How Does Sanctification Work? Part 1” is no exception.

Here’s the takeaway. I dare not extrapolate my exact experience of God’s mercies to everyone else. Similarly, those who have had their Christian life revolutionized by awakening to the significance of justification by faith dare not extrapolate that to everyone else. One pattern of Christ’s working (even a pattern common to many people) should not overshadow all the other patterns. A rightly “unbalanced” message is fresh, refreshing, joyous, full of song, life-transforming. But eventually, if it is oversold, it becomes a one-string harp, played by one finger, sounding one note. It drones. Scripture and the Holy Spirit play a 47-string concert harp, using all ten fingers, and sounding all the notes of human experience. Wise ministry, like growth in wisdom, means learning to play on all the strings, not harping on one note.

I am certain that those who teach “sanctification by revisiting justification” have heard that message as a new and joyous song that sanctifies them. May Jesus Christ be praised! Perhaps God has been liberating them from a ponderous Christianity that seemed to breed a weight of failure to perform, of failure to live up to expectations, of failure to accomplish all that needs doing, and of judgmentalism toward others who fail. May the God of mercies be praised! But let’s not forget to learn all the other sweet and joyous songs. And let’s learn the darker notes of lamentation and the blues. Let’s learn the call to action in work songs and marching music. And let’s learn everything else that comports with and nourishes life in Christ.   Continue at Justin Taylor

The Local Church is THE place for Biblical Counseling

Can local churches become a natural home for counseling ministry? Often the limitations or failures of the church get cited first, making it seem that church is at best an adjunct to “the real work of counseling.” But, in principle, the local church is the natural home for face-to-face ministry. Counseling can and should thrive in local churches. Here are five of the numerous advantages to counseling being localized in the church.

First, a wise pastor (or friend, elder, small group leader, mentor, etc.) has many advantages over the secular paradigm of the office-bound counselor. In your own church you know people. You have seen them in action. Perhaps you know their parents and friends. You see how they treat their kids. You know how they handle themselves in a group. You have “back-story,” and aren’t limited to hearing only one side of the story. You know what kind of Christian nurture they are receiving week to week—and counseling can build on that. In addition to a wider knowledge base, you relate at multiple levels. You can invite people to your home, and invite yourself into their home. You can initiate the relationship, and express your concern. In contrast, office-bound counseling is structurally passive, always only on the receiving end of inquiry or referral. There is an active, outreaching quality to counseling ministry when we conceptualize it in the church.   Continue at David Powlison

Battling Depression . . . Together

In 1954, speaking of spiritual depression, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I have no hesitation in asserting that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition."

It's striking to hear of how common the struggle was in his day. Depression is no stranger to the great leaders in church history (in fact, it affected quite a lot of them), but neither is depression uncommon in the church today.

So what do we, as a church, do about it? We recently asked biblical counselor Ed Welch. Here's what he said.

Ed Welch is a speaker at our upcoming National Conference. Visit the event page to learn more and register.

For more on the theme of depression see —

• Ed Welch, book, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness
• Ed Welch, booklet, Depression: The Way Up When You Are Down
• John Piper, book, When the Darkness Will Not Lift
• John Piper, book, When I Don't Desire God, chapter 12: "When the Darkness Does Not Lift"
• John Piper, book, Future Grace, chapter 24: "Faith in Future Grace vs. Despondency"

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Other videos from our trip to CCEF and Westminster Theological Seminary —

• The Heart of Sinful Anger (David Powlison)
• Is Sanctification Complex or Simple? (David Powlison)
• How Christ Died To Sin, And Why It Matters (Richard Gaffin)
• Learning About Sanctification From Fyodor Dostoyevsky (David Powlison)
• Why Pornography Robs a Man of His Humanness (Ed Welch)
• The Blessed Struggle Against Fear and Anxiety (Ed Welch)
• God's Aim in Election, and Our Personal Holiness (Richard Gaffin)
• Fear, Anxiety, and Growing in Sanctification (Ed Welch)
• Can I Grow in Holiness Without the Local Church? (David Powlison)

 Credit: Desiring God

The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams

The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams by Heath Lambert (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011)

It may surprise some that the brief history of biblical counseling is a complex one considering its fairly straightforward premise that the Bible is the sufficient foundation and guiding authority of counseling. But biblical counseling is itself, in fact, a complex practice shaped by diverse influences - hermeneutics, psychology, ecclesiology, apologetics, and even epistemology. The interplay of these various disciplines naturally leads to different emphases and practices by biblical counselors.

 

Heath Lambert has performed a great service in providing a succinct well organized summary of the biblical counseling movement as it has developed after Jay Adams. It is a book I recommend for those who want an overview of the biblical counseling movement but aren't ready to tackle David Powlison's hefty 352 page, The Biblical Counseling Movement, a book I recommend for those who want to dig deeper. One of the prominent characteristics of Lambert's book is that it is not simply a history of the movement, but an invitation to participate in it; to know not only what the movement is, but where it has been; and to play a part in where it is going. In fact, the foreword itself, written by David Powlison, outlines six stages of development to help the reader know his or her role in the movement and Lambert himself makes his own suggestions about where the movement needs development in Chapter 6, "An Area Still in Need of Advancement."  Continue at Winston Smith

The Biblical Counseling Movement After Jay Adams

Most biblical counselors would dismiss the term schizophrenia as an unhelpful and confusing label. Heath Lambert has demonstrated, however, that the term has validity as a literary genre. The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams is a number of contradictory things. It is a respectful recounting of the contributions of Jay Adams and a collection of harsh and unkind epithets about the man and his followers. It is both a carefully researched Ph. D. thesis and grievous academic malpractice. It identifies important issues within the biblical counseling movement and embraces as authoritative shoddily constructed straw men. Lambert praises concepts he himself finds questionable, and confuses movement with maturity, differences with development, and provocation with progress. Upon a careful reading of this book, biblical counselors who are familiar with the issues reported here will be made both thankful and appalled.

Lambert has a genuine respect and appreciation for Jay Adams. It is evident in his first chapter in which he surveys Adams’ early writings and places them in the context of the times they were written. It is a careful and complete survey and serves as a great introduction to the man and his writings. In his conclusion, Lambert correctly points out that Adams has always welcomed a careful examination of what he has written and invited others to build on what Adams himself admitted was preliminary (although not tentative). Lambert does just that. He seeks to identify specific areas where, in his view, Adams’ work was deficient—even erroneous—and marshals support for his conclusions by quoting as authoritative those who do not share his deep respect for Adams—many of whom have misrepresented Adams, and questioned his integrity, character, and scholarship.

As a credible scholarly work The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams was doomed from the beginning. It began as a Ph.D. project at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville where Lambert teaches. His purpose was to chronicle what he perceived to be the “development” of the biblical counseling movement in its “second generation” iteration. In Lambert’s mind, it was to be a continuation—a volume two—of a dissertation written by David Powlison in 1996 and later published in book form in 2009. Continue at Institute for Nouthetic Studies