Presuppositions with Respect to Counsel Given

Introduction: Presuppositions for the Counseled Person

0:03 Having already covered a broad introduction to the field of pastoral counseling, we began to consider the presuppositional framework for pastoral counseling, and I sought to underscore the fact that all counseling does indeed have a presuppositional framework, and that the presuppositional framework is constantly and powerfully active in all of our counseling, though not necessarily consciously or cognitively present, it is nonetheless present and active. We then proceeded to address the foundational category of our presuppositions, namely the presuppositions as they relate to the counselor,

0:48 that is, to the pastor engaged in an aspect of his pastoral duty with one or more of those under his care. We come today to take...

1:00 We take up the second major area or category of the presuppositional framework for pastoral counseling, and it has to do with the presuppositions as they relate to the person counseled. So we move from the counselor, the pastor ministering at an individual level to one of the sheep, to the person counseled. And at this point in the material that is found in your printed sheets, and that I will seek to cover with you this morning, I am greatly indebted. To Pastor Nichols, we team-taught this course a number of years ago, and much of the raw materials for today's lecture was in reality a distillation of his course in systematics on anthropology

1:44 and interlaced with some of his stuff and material on soteriology. So basically what we're going to do in wrestling with the presuppositions as they relate to the person counseled is to have a...

2:00 a very quick overview of some of the fundamental deposits of biblical truth in the areas of both anthropology and soteriology. And my organizing principle is to consider the presuppositions as they relate to the person counseled in two major categories. First of all, considering them as created and fallen, intermingling the biblical perspectives with regard to man as he is created, and man as he has fallen in Adam, and then man as he is renewed by the grace and power of God through the gospel.

Man as Created and Fallen: Accountability

2:40 So then, when we sit down with that person that we have either initiated this pastoral contact with them, or they have initiated by a telephone call, by disclosure of an area of need, and at a given time, mutually agreed upon, we sit down with them, most likely, in our studies, how are we to view that person before us? Remember, the person is a member, as far as we know, not merely externally a member of the church of Christ, but we have every reason to believe that his or her profession of faith is valid, and they sit before us then as a creature made in the image of God, fallen in Adam, but redeemed in Christ.

3:24 How are we to view them? What presuppositions need...

3:28 How are we to be operative in the whole context of our counsel? Well, as we view them in the reality of what they are as created and fallen, there are five categories that I want to cover with you. And first of all, viewing them as created and fallen, we must never forget their accountability. They are moral agents accountable to the God who has made them.

3:56 In Romans 14 and verse 12, So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God. And that accountability goes to specifics. 2 Corinthians 5.10 We must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ that each may receive the things done in his body.

4:21 The things done in the body. According to what he has done, I'm sorry I misquoted that, that each one may receive...

4:28 the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether it be good or bad. Now granted, the moment we think of accountability, and we are sensitive to biblical revelation, we know there is a tension as to how man's real accountability interfaces with the decree of God that encompasses all acts of all men, even their sinful acts. We have the well-known statement in Acts chapter 2, in which Peter brings together these two realities, recognizing that each stands on its own independent biblical footing, Acts 2 and verse 23,

5:11 him being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. God's decree framed all that happened to the Lord Jesus in his death. Yet you, by the hand of lawless men, did crucify, crucify and slay. And Romans 9 and verse 19 reflects again the recognition of this tension.

5:38 Joseph's well-known statement to his brethren in Acts, Genesis 50 and verse 20, you meant it for evil. All of their acts born of wicked motives, you meant it for evil, but God meant it, the same complex of events, for good. So we recognize that tension, that interfacing, and denial of either of those realities, man's accountability or God's absolute sovereignty, will lead either on the one hand to fatalism or on the other to humanism. But we stand in the biblical perspective that those to whom we seek to minister in a counseling situation

6:17 sit before us as those fully accountable to God for their actions, for their thoughts, for their motives. And I checked with the latest edition, the Competent Council, to see if Dr. Adams had made a correction of what is, in my judgment, I just find it unbelievable that he should have let this stand in his book, Competent Council, which, as you know, we highly commend, and you've been given a number of reading assignments. But what do we mean by responsibility and accountability?

6:49 Well, not what Dr. Adams says. On page 83, what is responsibility? Responsibility is the ability to respond, as God says man should respond in every life situation.

7:04 That's pure Pelagianism. And I know he's not a Pelagian. And then he takes up the little use of the word, respond-ability. It is the ability to do good to those who despitefully use you.

7:18 It is the ability to feed one's enemy. It is the ability to overcome evil with good. Responsibility is respond-ability. And that's a weak, weak definition of it.

7:30 Now he goes on to qualify in the next statement the God-given ability to respond to any situation in life according with his commandments. No, responsibility is what God requires of us and has a right to require of us, whether in the state of nature or of grace. So if we change the word responsibility to accountability, then it is true. Accountability.

7:56 Responsibility is the accountability. To respond as God says we should respond. And this is crucial in our dealings with those with whom we counsel. That they have a responsibility to love God with all the heart, even though they have no ability to do so apart from the grace of God.

8:18 And likewise this Christian who is dealing with a besetting sin deeply ingrained over years of habitual practice has a responsibility to cease from that sin, immediately. Though he may not have the ability, even in a state of grace, to deal immediately with it. There are dimensions of the sovereignty of the work of the Spirit, both in the unregenerate, the wind blows where it wills, so is everyone born of the Spirit, and likewise the dimensions and the degree of the operations of grace in the life of a Christian. But that has nothing to do with his accountability, his responsibility before God.

8:58 Now we are not saying that there may not emerge in the counseling situation the identification of mitigating circumstances, predispositions to certain sinful behavior patterns, chemical disorders, even demon possession. There are people who will need medication and don't take it. They're responsible that they've not used the means that God puts at their disposal. So that we do not stick our head in the sand, with any legitimate, discovery of legitimate science with regard to chemical imbalances.

9:34 Should there be some ultimate, undeniable data, hard, fast, empirical data to demonstrate that certain people with certain genetic patterns are more disposed to homosexual behavior? That won't disturb us. Any more than if there's scientific evidence that some are more genetically disposed to become alcoholics. God still holds the man accountable.

9:58 That's what I'm saying. God holds the man accountable who becomes wedded to his bottle. God holds the man accountable who yields to his tendencies to relate sensually and sexually and erotically with those of the same sex. So we have nothing to fear from whatever may emerge in any field of legitimate human inquiry with respect to predispositions, mitigating circumstances, but at the end of the day we stand on our Bibles and say we shall give an account of the deeds done in the body.

10:31 Who shall judge the secrets of men's hearts? The very secrets of the heart. Men are accountable for them. And likewise when we are dealing with the child of God, he is accountable to take the straightest, most immediate course in dealing with the issue that is the issue of concern that has emerged in the counseling session.

10:55 The scripture says that we are responsible. We are responsible to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in us to will and to work for his good pleasure. He doesn't say if God is pleased to work in you, if perhaps God may eventually. No.

11:14 He says you do this because God is doing this. The indicative of God's working lies at the foundation of the imperative of our responsible engagement of all of our faculties. So, if someone says in a counseling session, I can't, we say you must. And we press it until they say I will by God's grace.

11:40 I shall never forget a good dose of theology I received from one of the old brethren in the church who came out of a hyper background. He said, Pastor, we heard all our lives, you can't, you can't, you can't. We were never told you may and you must. When the summons would go out to believe, it was always appended.

12:00 But we know you can't believe. He said we were never told you may and you must. And as we sit to counsel with people, especially in this age of victimization where people are learning to shift responsibility to everything and everyone but themselves. When we sit to counsel with someone as created and fallen creatures, we must never forget their accountability to God.

Man as Created and Fallen: Identity as Image of God

12:26 But then secondly, we must not be mixed up. In our minds with respect to their identity. They are the image of God. Man is the living, visible image of God.

12:42 Man made images are dead, that's the idol. God is the living God and he made in his image a creature with mind, conscience, affection and will. The text is familiar to all of us in the original creation and God said let us make man in our image. And after our likeness in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

13:09 And even with the horrible, disruptive influence of the Fall, James 3 and verse 9 clearly validates that the image is not obliterated. It is defaced but not effaced. It is greatly marred but it is not obliterated. For James in that text makes it clear.

13:30 That man's identity as image of God is to lie at the heart of our ethical treatment of our fellow man. Therewith bless we the Lord and Father and therewith curse we men who are made after the likeness of God. So men are yet images of God. And we must understand their identity as image of God.

13:57 We counsel on knowing. Self-conscious. Self-conscious, feeling, self-judging person. Now Philip Hughes in his book the True Image, the Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ has some excellent material.

14:11 I want openly to say I do not in any way sympathize with his chapter in which he espouses conditional immortality. This was his first open clear statement to my knowledge of that position which he came to espouse and I have no sympathy for it. And I would be grieved. if anyone got this book and inadvertently came upon that chapter and was in any way shaken in your view of the biblical concept of this issue.

14:39 But, having said that, it does not mean that the book is all bad. And he has some excellent material on this whole matter of what constitutes the image of God, in what ways are we to perceive the image. And he suggests that man's surpassing excellence as image-bearer in his unique identity, only man is said to be made in the image and likeness of God, it involves six things. Personality, I put them in your notes, spirituality, rationality, morality, authority, and creativity.

15:14 And I found that treatment very, very helpful. And then he goes on to underscore that none of these matters, none of these commodities is obliterated or utterly effaced on account of sin. It is mockery. It is hard.

15:30 It is in great measure distorted. But personality, spirituality, rationality, morality, authority, and creativity, none of them is obliterated or utterly effaced. And so we must recognize that as we deal with those who sit before us. They are either image-bearers who have yet to be renewed in Christ, or they are image-bearers who have undergone the renewing work of God, but their essential identity, their identity is that of image of God.

Man as Created and Fallen: Constitution (Diversity, Unity, Uniqueness)

16:02 Then thirdly, we better have some solid, clear, biblical anthropology with regard to their constitution. And you see, once we get fixed in our mind that we're not doing something fundamentally different in kind from what we do when we preach, none of us would want anyone to be a trusted guide in the public preaching of the word who didn't have a biblical anthropology, would we? We want to know that the one who is...

16:27 We want to know that the one who is... We want to know that the one who is...

16:28 We want to know that the one who is... The one who is preaching understands who man is.

16:32 Well, when we are in the study and we are counseling, we are not doing something of a different kind. Circumstantially, what we're doing is different. The cosmetics, different. But you see, we are ministers of the word of God.

16:46 And therefore, we must have a clear biblical concept, not only of the accountability of the sheep before us, the identity as image-bearer, but their constitution. And what's involved in their constitution? Well, we have some sub-heads under their constitution. Three things.

17:06 Essential diversity. And what do we mean by that? Well, we're trying to give human words to what is clearly set forth by our Lord in Matthew 10 and verse 28. Do not fear them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

17:25 Do not be afraid of those that are able to kill the body, but not able to kill the soul. Our Lord makes a fundamental identification of body and of soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. So here we have a very clear statement of the essential diversity in this image-bearer. There is that which is corporeal.

17:54 There is that which can be seen and touched and felt, the body. There is that which is non, corporeal and invisible and indivisible. The soul. You can lop off an arm from the body, but you can't lop off an appendage to the soul.

18:11 And so we've got to understand that diversity. James 2.26 As the body, apart from the spirit, is dead. Two entities, body and spirit.

18:22 So faith, apart from works, is dead. And we must have a clear understanding of this as we sit. A holistic anthropology that views man as a single integrated entity has often led to the heresy of annihilationism. Because if he's destroyed, all that he is is destroyed.

18:48 And you'll see some of the strains of that in the chapter in Philip Hughes, where he deals with what would classically be called conditional immortality and attacks the pagan idea of the non- or the immortality or the non-immortality of the soul, rather than, from my understanding, I don't ever use the term. If you could hear me preach for 20 years and never hear me speak of the immortality of the soul as something inherent in what man is, I will speak of the non-destructibility of the soul. But immortality being a biblical word and immortality being described in the Bible is something that is ours in Christ. We need to be careful with our terminology lest we use one that people can shoot down

19:30 without ever touching biblical stuff in that shooting down. So be clear and recognize that your anthropology with regard to the actual constitution of man as a creature with essential diversity is critical. And we'll see why that is when we get into particulars. But then, though there is essential diversity, there is organic unity.

19:56 We don't have a body that exists out here apart from the soul except when... someone stretched out in the funeral parlor.

20:02 As the body apart from the spirit is dead. Nor do we deal with souls that are disembodied spirits. They are joined to bodies. And there is this organic unity.

20:16 And we see this in the original creation. God creates the physical constitution of Adam and breathes into him the breath of life. And then it doesn't say, and man had, but man became living, soul. That was his identity.

20:32 Living soul. But as living soul, he is this organic unity. He is, someone said, inspirited corporeality. Theologians can come up with mouthfuls of words, but it does express it beautifully.

20:48 Inspirited corporeality. He is living soul. And as such, there are shared traits. There is shared sinfulness.

20:59 There is shared liability. There is co-action of body and soul. Think of the whole intrusion of sin. How does sin come into the human experience?

21:12 Eve sees. She makes a judgment that it would taste good. Here the physical senses become the hook. There is an appeal to elements of the soul.

21:24 An envy and a desire for that which God had not laid out as part of his good. And acceptable and perfect will for man, the creature. When Eve saw, then she partakes in the entrance of sin. In the effect of sin upon the human being.

21:45 We see it there in Genesis chapter 3. We see it again in chapter 4. When there is this internal disruption, when Cain slays his brother, the Lord comes and says, why is your countenance fallen? The state of his soul is mirrored in his countenance.

22:01 His countenance. And we have those passages that speak of the spirit of a man sustaining his infirmity. But a broken spirit who can bear. So there is this co-action of body and soul.

22:14 All of it growing out of the biblical doctrine of the organic unity. Now you say, what relevance does that have to counseling? Well, the problems are not simple and monochromatic. Nor are the solutions.

22:28 Maladies of the soul will spill over into the body. If you knew nothing of David's sins, and simply observed him as he describes himself in Psalm 32, 3 and 4, you'd say, surely he has some deep chemical imbalance, some deep psychosis. He says, I cried so much that I had no more tears. He said, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.

22:53 He speaks in terminology of making his couch to swim until there are no more tears. You'd say, surely he has, he has some kind of radical chemical imbalance. No, all of the distress of his body was but a reflection of the deeper distress and condition of his soul. And this is true not with respect just to sin, but when you read 1 Kings 19, the man of God is exhausted after that dramatic encounter on Mount Carmel.

23:23 And what happens when all of his bodily faculties are drained? Whereas before he can say, look, I've got 850 false prophets here on a mountain, and I'm going to confront them head on, single-handedly. And he just gets word, he doesn't even see her, that that painted witch in the palace is after his hide. And what does he do? He runs.

23:45 And he has a death wish. He has a death wish. But what does the Lord do? He doesn't rebuke him for his unbelief. He doesn't scold him.

23:53 He puts him to sleep, wakes him up, feeds him, puts him back to sleep, wakes him up, and then he begins to graciously deal with him. What are you doing here, Elijah? Why? Because God recognized the creature he had made, and there was this organic unity between the tremendous physical and emotional and mental strain.

24:12 Can you imagine what it would be like to hack and hew 400 people with your own hands? The text says that he slew them by the brook. Can you imagine what that would be like to a sensitive man who has a heart for a widow and her dead son? I've never had to kill a human being.

24:30 The few times I've killed an animal and seen it in the death twitches and die, I've been distressed for days. A sober thing to see life ebb away, even with a little squirrel. The man of God slew them. A tremendous drain.

24:52 God dealt with him as a wise counselor. He recognized that in this matter of his constitution there was not only this essential diversity, but this organic unity. And then, of course, we need to recognize their unique identity. Each one has his own unique personal identity.

25:12 In the midst of a snow storm, you can say snowflakes are falling everywhere, and you know it's not peas and apples and bananas dropping out of heaven. It's snowflakes. But you know if you examine them under a microscope, no two of them will be the same. Those are human beings.

25:32 This is a human being. This is a fellow image bearer sitting before me. Yes, that's the large category of identity. But we've got to recognize their uniqueness, the whole matter of their temperament, the inbred disposition to behave in a given way.

25:49 Some are con-created in such a way that they are more naturally pliable, others more naturally stubborn, more courageous, some more fearful, some more liable to discouragement, others more outgoing, others more reserved, and in-drawn. Psalm 139.13-16 celebrates that none of this was by accident. We were there, as it were, upon God's loom, and He was weaving all the threads from the gene pool that would make us what we are in our own unique individual identity.

26:22 And then there is the insinuation of sin through the gene pool as well, into all the various departments of who and what we are. And when you sit down to deal with someone, then you see immediately, you're not looking, how do I peg this person, into what category? When you read this stuff in Christian counseling about taking up the old four categories of phlegmatic and sanguine and melancholic and the rest, you say, the Lord have mercy on anyone that deals in that way with Christ's sheep. You can't put them in four categories determined by an ancient psychology.

26:58 There is an absolute uniqueness, and we must sit open to discover, with the Word of God, an independence upon the Spirit, and insofar as people let us in to discover who they are. 1 Corinthians 2.11, Who knows the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? And where this is the great challenge, but a sound biblical anthropology will help us to deal as we ought with God's people.

Man as Created and Fallen: Culpability and Conditioning

27:25 So we need to keep before us, as created and fallen preachers, their accountability, their identity, their constitution, in its diversity, unity, and unique identity, but then their culpability. Their culpability. Now this in some ways is ancillary to accountability, but it focuses more upon what they are as fallen preachers. Fallen preachers to whom guilt and blameworthiness are not to be foreign issues.

27:56 And you see the nature of sin is not changed by conversion. A redeemed man's relationship to sin is radically changed, as to its guilt, as to its power. But sin itself is not changed. It still blinds, it binds, it hardens.

28:16 Now where it reigns, there it manifests itself in rebellion. Romans 8.7, The carnal mind is enmity against God, not possesses some, is occasionally tinged with. It is enmity itself.

28:30 The carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. But at any point where remaining sin acts, it will act consistent with that disposition of rebellion. Reigning sin makes us blind, as we were reminded in the previous hour, blinded to the glory of Christ, blinded to our true condition.

28:56 And where sin is dethroned and merely remains, it still remains as sin that not only has in it the disposition of rebellion, but the faculty of blindness and ignorance, and likewise with bondage, etc. Sin does not change as to what sin is. And though its power is broken, nonetheless its actings are according to its own nature. And I've listed a number of texts here, and you can use them as you see fit.

29:29 I'm not going to turn to each of them. I've quoted a couple of them now. And with the child of God, his sense of accountability, I do want to heighten two of these texts. Ezekiel 16 and verse 33.

29:45 And then we're going to look at Romans 6.21. When you're dealing with the child of God who is no longer under the condemning power of his sin and hopefully has a sense of divine acceptance, yet notice what the prophet says with respect to this element of the renewed heart. Verse 62.

30:10 And I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth any more because of your shame, when I have forgiven you all that you have done, says the Lord Jehovah. There is a shame that is the fruit of God, as well as a shame that is a harbinger of grace. Until a man is brought to own with shame his sin, he'll never be converted. But there is a shame that accompanies God's forgiving grace.

30:49 And he says you will remember and be confounded and never open your mouth because of your shame when I have forgiven you all that you have done, says the Lord God. And likewise in Romans 6.21, where Paul is describing the radical transformation of God's grace, in the first half of the chapter, under the imagery of union with Christ, death, burial, and resurrection, freedom from the power of sin through union with Christ in His redemptive acts, but from verse 15 onward, freedom from sin in terms of a change of masters. And in that setting, he says in verse 21,

31:32 what fruit then had you at that time in the things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. Well, if I'm forgiven, why am I still ashamed? Because of my culpability and the remembrance of what I once was and what I did.

31:53 So that forgiveness never leads to a spirit of a cavalier attitude. And as you're dealing with God's people, you must recognize this. If they are thinking properly about themselves and you are thinking rightly about them, then you will not forget this matter of culpability that will even produce a chastened, sanctified shame for sins long since forgiven. But then we've got to recognize, as part of our presuppositional framework, their conditioning, their conditioning as created and fallen, and they have been conditioned in three broad categories, domestically, socially, and religiously.

32:35 They've been influenced by family, society, and church. Domestically. Remember what Jesus said in John 8, 44, You are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he was a liar.

32:52 He abode not in the truth. He said you're acting just like your father. You are imitating your spiritual father. And imitation is woven into the very texture of the domestic sphere.

33:05 And don't underestimate its power. While we are not in any way undermining personal responsibility or culpability, if we are wise shepherds of souls, we're going to probe into what influence molded and shaped this person that may presently have a great deal to do with the problem that they're seeking to share with us. Because of this whole principle, this whole principle of imitation, God says in Exodus 20, verses 4 and 5, that the sins of the fathers are passed on to the third and the fourth generation of those that hate him. And that's a reality.

33:49 And we've got to recognize that as we look upon the person with whom we are seeking to deal in a pastoral way. Then also they've been influenced socially or societally. Titus 1, 12 and 13. Paul is informing people that in his pastoral involvement with Cretans he may have a peculiar amount of both public preaching to do and pastoral counseling to do with the prevailing sins of that society.

34:18 He says of the Cretans that they are liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons. This testimony is true. For which cause? Reprove them sharply that they may be sound in the faith.

34:29 These Cretan believers were not insulated from the impact of the social or societal conditioning that molded them and shaped them in their formative years. And all of that was not shed like a dirty garment when they came over the threshold into conversion and into the orbit of the life and ministry of the church. And when you think of what is molded and shaped if God were to break in right now and save a hundred people in their mid-twenties in Montville who are typical middle-class Montvillites. Then you look at the statistics.

35:04 How many thousands of hours have they spent in front of their TV? What have they seen of godly, tender, assertive biblical manhood in their fathers? What have they seen of sweet, submissive, chaste, modest, meek and quiet spirit femininity in their mothers? Zilch! Zilch!

35:25 Most of them would have seen zilch! What would they think about the high ethical standards of male and female women? What would they think about sexual relationships? God's abomination of fornication as well as adultery?

35:41 The permanence of the marriage bond? Everywhere you look and they bring all of this baggage. Yes, the dynamism of grace has been implanted within them. But the Bible nowhere gives us reason to think that all of the grave claws of the social conditioning are left.

36:00 Just read 1 Corinthians. In my early Christian life I really never questioned the wisdom of God. I could not really find myself entering into why Paul had to spend a whole chapter giving seven reasons why Christians shouldn't fornicate in chapter 6. Everybody knows Christians shouldn't fornicate.

36:20 No, everybody doesn't know that. No, they don't. And as we come more and more into the moral and ethical climate in society that matches the first century, whole portions of the word of God are going to begin to open up to us with fresh relevance. But that's what you're going to deal with when you sit in council with that person.

36:39 Someone who's been conditioned not only domestically but socially and then in church or religiously. You see, look at the disciples. Why were they so thick about a Messiah who would die? Because their whole religious conditioning said Messiah doesn't die.

36:59 Messiah comes riding on a charger and he conquers Rome and he makes Jerusalem the center of political influence throughout the earth. That was so ingrained in them. So ingrained in them. That the Lord Jesus had to keep going over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

37:20 You have people who've imbibed liberalism. God is only love, always love. Man is basically good. Well, to even begin to think of a God who has a controversy with the wicked and a creature called man who is inherently and fundamentally and inveterately evil.

37:40 And you've got people that come out of Romanism, some of the most difficult pastoral things I've had to deal with over the years are people who were old-time Roman Catholics to whom works, righteousness was a part of the very stuff of their soul. And they struggle for the rest of their days just when you think they've really got it in place now and they understand that their acceptance before God has nothing to do with their performance. It rests solely upon the doing and the dying of another. A situation will emerge when it's like this.

38:12 A state is driven right back into the depths of their soul and out comes the putrid smell of Romish thinking and Romist reaction. And you've got to understand that, that you're dealing with people. This person's struggle with assurance may not fundamentally be a problem that they're slow in grasping the concept that man is justified on the grounds of the imputed righteousness of Christ. It may be some wrinkle in the brain that was pushed into the very forefront into the very folds of their whole pattern of thinking by their Romish upbringing.

38:46 You'll get people greatly conditioned by easy believism. Others, as we had some years ago, a whole group of people with hyper-Calvinism. I'd read about hyper-Calvinists in my reading of church history and in biography, but I'd never met a real live hyper-Calvinist. Then all of a sudden we got a whole more than a handful of them.

39:06 And their struggles were deep and real. And you have to understand that. If you're going to minister to them at the point of their real need. So this is, I say, is a brief overview of what we must understand concerning those to whom we are to minister in a pastoral counseling situation.

Man as Re-created/Redeemed: Blessings of Salvation Applied (Ability, Love, Hope, Communion, Forgiveness, Preservation)

39:27 We must grasp before God and continue to bring before our own minds these realities with respect to what they are as created and fallen creatures. But then we've also got to keep before us as our presuppositional framework what they are, if they are the sheep of Christ, as re-created or redeemed creatures. And this again is absolutely crucial if our counsel is going to be an exercise in valid biblical pastoral ministry. So I think to keep the unity in the lecture I'll break here.

40:04 It's a little bit perspective with regard to the person we are counseling or the sheep to whom we are ministering in a one-to-one pastor-flock relationship. And not only must we have presuppositions rooted in the Word of God and the sound theology with regard to who they are as created and fallen, but with respect to who and what they are as re-created or redeemed creatures. And here I've organized the material under two headings. We need to look upon them and in all of our dealings with them regard them as those who have experienced the blessings of salvation applied.

40:45 The Scripture has, as you know, a doctrine of definitive sanctification. A sanctification that occurs on the threshold of experiential union with Christ and conversion that is nothing less than a radical transformation of the soul from a state of nature to a state of grace. Sin's dominion has been broken. The reign of grace has begun within the soul and will be consummated at the second coming.

41:18 However, this radical, basic, all-pervasive transformation is neither perfect nor complete. And we're in the already-but-not-yet motif. And we are already the children of God, but John says it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we must have a fundamental understanding of and a present awareness of the realities of what this person has experienced by the grace of God.

41:51 And first of all, we need to keep before us that they have a restored ability to please and to serve God. A restored ability to serve and to please God. Not to serve Him perfectly. Not to please Him in all things.

42:10 But fundamentally to serve Him and to please Him. And I've listed as one of the key texts the entire sixth chapter of the Book of Romans where the emphasis falls upon this restored ability to please God through union with Christ. We have died to sin's dominion. We have been buried with Him, risen to newness of life, and we are to count on that reality and the practical expression of it, the presentation of our members as instruments of righteousness unto God, is predicated upon the recognition of that fundamental dynamic of grace.

42:48 Sin's dominion has been broken. The old master has been dethroned. God and righteousness are the new master. And fruit is being born unto righteousness.

43:01 The same emphasis is found in the first part of Romans 8, epitomized in verse 9, having stated that those whose life is regulated by the realm of the flesh cannot please God. The apostle writes in verse 9, but you are not in the flesh. That is, with respect to your fundamental orientation of life, you are not in the realm of flesh, but in the realm of the Spirit. If so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

43:37 And the clear teaching of the passage is that if a man possesses the Spirit of Christ, this is not positional. You'll hear the terminology, well, that's positional. And what people are trying to say by that is, that's merely theoretical. It has no necessary impingement upon life.

43:52 No, this is not positional. He says if the Spirit of God dwells in you, you are no longer found as to your fundamental ethical orientation in the realm of flesh, but in the realm of the Spirit. And if you do not so possess the Spirit, and with that, this transformation of ethical orientation, you are none of His. So that those to whom we are ministering do have a restored ability to please and serve God.

44:20 Those in the flesh have no such ability. Those in the Spirit do. Romans 8.13 Those who possess the Spirit are given the ability by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body.

44:33 But if you by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live. And there are two very helpful statements in our own confession of faith. In chapter 10, paragraph 1, on effectual calling, reads as follows. Those whom God has predestinated unto life He has pleased in His appointed and accepted time effectually to call, and then how He does it.

44:58 And then in that calling, this is what happens. Taking away their heart of stone, giving unto them, a heart of flesh, renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good. There is a transformation in the prevailing bent of the soul, determining them to that which is good. And the first evidence of that, of course, is that they come willingly, being made willing by His grace and repentance and faith are the first actings of that renewed ability, but they are never the last.

45:37 They are the first, but never the last when wrought by God. And then in chapter 16, in the chapter on good works, paragraph 3, their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ, that they may be enabled thereunto. Besides the graces they've already received, there is necessary an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. There is an ability given to do good works.

46:18 It is a graciously imparted ability, but it is indeed ability given. And in that sense, with Enoch, we can please God. For before God took him, he had this testimony that he pleased God. Hebrews 11 and verse 5.

46:36 By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and he was not found because God translated him. For he had this witness born to him that before his translation he had been well-pleasing unto God. And without faith, it is impossible to be well-pleasing to God. The converse is true.

46:58 In the context of faith, it is possible to be well-pleasing to God. For he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. And the Scripture speaks of works that are, through Christ, well-pleasing unto God. And so we must, in viewing those to whom we are ministering, view them as those who having experienced the blessings of salvation applied, do indeed have this restored ability both to please and to serve God.

47:36 This gives hope for the fearful, and is a death knell to self-help and to mere behavior modification. But then they also have a love and a hope in God. Romans 5, verses 1 to 11. We could read the entire passage, but you know the themes that are there.

47:57 As the fruit of justifying faith, we have peace with God, we have hope in God, the hope of everlasting life, which is not a wishful desire, but is a certain confidence of promised blessing. That's the biblical definition of hope. A certain confidence of promised blessing. And those who are in a state of grace, unless there is some radical, fundamental crossing of the wires in some aspect of their humanity, in some fundamental spiritual defect and gross misunderstanding, we can assume that if they're in a state of grace, they do have a love for

48:39 and a hope in God. And these motives are paramount in the Christian life. Nothing is more fundamental than love for God and biblical hope. So much so that Paul can say in Romans 8, verse 18, we are saved in hope.

48:56 So much is hope an integral part of our salvation that Paul can say we are saved in hope. In 2 Corinthians 4, verse 18, while we look not on the things that are seen, but on the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal. The Heidelberg Catechism grasps this.

49:19 Gratitude for mercy received is the foundational motive for a life that is lived well pleasing to God under the eye of God. And so when you're in the counseling session, if you assume this as a presupposition and you begin to press a behavior alteration that has to deal with attitudes of the heart as well as actions in the life, and you press the concepts of hope and love, and it's like nobody's home, you better begin to wonder if indeed you're dealing with a real sheep. I had a recent experience where these perspectives were pressed on an ethical aberration and it was like nobody was at home. The glory of Christ,

50:04 the honor of Christ, hope in God, love for Christ, those motives were not touching any strings. It was frightening. And I've personally begun to pray for this individual that God would save him. When those motives don't touch, we have every reason to believe scripturally that a true child of God has not only this restored ability to serve and please God, but has a fundamental love for and hope in God.

50:30 Thirdly, that they know something of communion with God through the gift of the Spirit. That they know something of communion with God and the gift of the Spirit. Paul can write, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.

50:57 Be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Paul assumes that that motive would touch the deepest springs of these Ephesian Christians. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you are sealed. He is the one who has marked you as God's possession.

51:13 Surely the thought of grieving Him will grieve you. Or 1 Corinthians 6.19 What? Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which you have of God and you are not your own?

51:26 You are bought with a price? You see, the true child of God having known something of communion with God, and an experiential acquaintance with the gift of the Spirit, will understand the biblical doctrine of desertion. Lord, have you cleaned and cast off forever? Lord, why do you hide your face?

51:46 These are the areas, this is the stuff with which you are going to work with the child of God. You are going to say, assuming that they know something of communion with God, this particular sin you are struggling with, what has it done to your devotional life? Oh, nothing. Business as usual.

52:02 Oh, is it? Well then, do they know anything of the Spirit? Do they know anything? You see, these are the things that have to kick in when you are seeking responsibly to deal with that sheep sitting before you.

52:18 And then, of course, they have experienced forgiveness of sins. And in the light of that reality, they know something of the sweetness of God's reconciled face. And our Lord assumes this, that in His own community the recognition of ongoing forgiveness will be part of daily experience, Matthew 6, 12 to 15. After this manner, pray, and included in the basic stuff of our prayers, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

52:50 And the one petition that He amplifies has to do with the ongoing dynamics of forgiveness. Psalm 130 and verse 4, If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. 1 John 1, 6 to 10.

53:09 Those who say sin is no issue to them, John says they are strangers to grace. They are liars. Truth has never been implanted. If they say they have no sin, if they have no struggle with sin, if they know nothing of divine forgiveness in the way of ongoing confession, John says there is something fundamentally defective.

53:30 So you can rightly pre-submit and suppose that this person sitting before you knows something of the dynamics, the joy of forgiveness, the heaviness of sin that has not been confessed and forgiven, and in that pre-supposition you must deal with that, you must deal as you interact with this child of God. And then they should know something of their preservation by God. Philippians 1, 6. Paul can say of the Philippians that he is confident that he who began a good work in them will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.

54:08 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 and 24. The God of peace sanctify you wholly and preserve your whole body, soul and spirit blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, faithfully see who called you who also will do it. The text that God willing will be opening up in two weeks who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Now why is this critical?

54:35 Because this true child of God who is dealing with an area of sin that they cannot conquer, an area of confusion about the will of God, this child of God is deeply concerned that he or she press on in the way of obedience to the injunction, be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is. They take seriously Romans 12, 1 and 2 having presented themselves as a living sacrifice. They desire to prove the good acceptable in the perfect will of God. They know enough of their Bibles to know that sin does not lord it over a child of God.

55:12 Where does a besetting sin begin to take on the characteristics of a reigning sin? It may be easy to theorize about that but when you're dealing with a distressed sheep that's not so easy. So if they don't have some sense that God ultimately preserves His own they will be open to despair and then the motives of confidence in the grace of God will erode. So these are some of the things that you and I have a right to assume are the presuppositions with respect to the person we counsel as recreated and redeemed in Christ.

Man as Re-created/Redeemed: Warfare with Evil (Indwelling Sin, Devil, World)

55:49 They do experience the blessings of salvation applied and we should expect that the dynamics of those blessings will be operative in the counseling session. But then they also experience warfare with evil. Me with they experience the reality of warfare with evil. And this reality can create both frustration and as I've already alluded an inability to distinguish between remaining and reigning sin.

56:24 What is the acting of sin in remaining corruption? What are the injection of the fiery darts of the devil? What may be demonic over demonic oppression? You see this is a problem.

56:38 And you're going to have to sit with people who wrestle with these problems. And they're coming to you for help. Well if you're not thinking in terms of the reality of these specific categories of their experience of warfare with evil how are you going to minister to them? Well let's break them down briefly.

56:56 First of all the evil of indwelling sin. I've listed the classic passage verses 7, 14 to 25. And try as I may over the years to take any other position on that passage than the classic position taken in the circles in which we have our most confidence for exegetical and theological precision. If I could only get over the problem of what to me would be Paul's utter irresponsible use of the present tense.

57:27 I think I could at least begin to try to track the arguments that put that in some never never land between conversion and being totally unawakened. But that to me is the foundational exegetical problem. Because it's unique apart from a couple of other personal references in the end of the epistle. Apart from opening his heart there in Romans 9 about his burden for his fellow Jews.

57:56 That intensely heart wrenching biographical first person expression the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not that I do. And then of course what some try to say is not a parallel passage but I believe is. You have the mini Romans 7 assertion in Galatians 5, 17. The flesh is lusting against the spirit and the spirit is lusting against the flesh.

58:22 These two are contrary the one to the other. Present reality. Now you're dealing with someone who knows both parts of that reality. And you get someone who says he doesn't.

58:33 First John 1, 8 to 10. If any man says he has no sin he's a liar. The truth is not in him. So that's an evil with which they are not unacquainted.

58:44 They know the struggle. There is the predisposition to the good. There is the desire for the perfect. And no true Christian ever aims at anything less than perfection.

58:55 Though he knows he'll not know perfection until the age to come. And so there is that evil and the subsequent and ongoing warfare. Then there's the evil of the devil. 1 Peter 5, 8.

59:07 All of us as the people of God are called upon to be sober, to be watchful. Your adversary, the devil. As a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour. Whom withstands steadfast in your faith.

59:24 Dealing with the devil is not the same as dealing with your indwelling sin. The Bible makes a distinction. And we must make a distinction as this person begins to speak to us. Our wheels are going.

59:38 Is this a manifestation of some outcropping of remaining sin? Is this the flesh lusting against the spirit? Or does this have the marks of some kind of concentrated attack of the devil? Or some of his minions from the pit?

59:52 Job was oppressed by the devil. And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, 7 His thorn in the flesh was a messenger of Satan. And in my own New Testament reading I was struck again. I've come into 2 Corinthians where when Paul is giving the counsel about the Corinthian church conferring in patent ways its love upon the repentant brother.

60:18 His great concern is this that no advantage be gained over us not by remaining sin but by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his devices. Here he focuses some pastoral counsel not upon how to deal with remaining sin. Though we could say that a disposition of unwillingness to forgive a penitent brother is rooted in some aspect of remaining sin Paul places the emphasis here upon the devices of the devil.

60:49 And he says in thinking about you Corinthians my counsel is born out of an awareness of what the devil would do to take advantage of this situation and I'm giving counsel that we might not be taken advantage of by the host of darkness. So there is the evil of the devil and then there is the evil of the world. Romans 12 Central to Paul's appeal for an appropriate response to the mercies of God is the recognition that the world has not declared a truce with the child of God. It is aggressive.

61:29 It is determined to round off the right angles and to conform all who are within the orbit of its influence into its own image. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. It is aggressive. It is active.

61:45 It is under the control of the devil himself. Ephesians chapter 2 And if we are going to responsibly deal with people who come before us we have got to reckon with this reality that they are experiencing the evil of the world's aggressive effort to mold them after its own pattern and after its own fashion. Well, those are some of the things that we need to have in our presuppositional complex when we sit and seek to give ourselves to Christ afresh and to those to whom we are going to minister as Christ's instruments to help them on their way to heaven. This is what they are.

Conclusion: Presuppositions in Preaching and Counseling

62:28 They are creatures who have been created and fallen. They are those who have been recreated and redeemed. And these are the things that form the stuff of the framework within which we seek responsibly to bring the word of God to bear upon them. And so I come back full circle to something I mentioned earlier in the previous lecture.

62:50 You see, we are not doing something fundamentally different in kind from what we do when we preach. Circumstantially, many things are different but surely, when you are preparing, for example, as I have been meditating for weeks on that opening eulogy in 1 Peter and just having it literally wash over my mind in the middle of the night when I lie awake at times, am I a responsible exposit of the word if I am not thinking this has got to be expounded and applied to people who are created and fallen creatures, accountable to God, culpable before God. They are creatures who, if unregenerate, this won't excite them one bit. That which causes Peter to just pull out all the stops and break out into eulogy will leave them

63:35 as utterly indifferent as though I were lecturing on computer chips. Am I a responsible creature if I don't presuppose that is their condition as created and fallen if yet unredeemed? Am I responsible if I don't think what will the two people of God do as they are brought into a fresh awareness and for some a new understanding, I think, a new understanding of the word of God and of the word of God and of the word of understanding. I think of some of the young converts who sit there and don't even blink during the whole service who've just recently been brought out of darkness into light and they fasten upon everything.

64:10 What will this response be? They have a renewed ability to serve and to please God and they desire to please Him. How will this...

64:18 Well, you see, in all the stuff of your preaching you're working with these presuppositions all the time. Don't become something different when you're sitting in the study and you have a distressed or needy sheep in front of you. You're still dealing with the same stuff. And that presuppositional framework is your responsibility and your privilege in all of your interaction with the people of God.

64:41 Well, that's what I had prepared to give you this morning. I got through it a little quicker than I had anticipated so that leaves us a half an hour and we still stick within our time frame.