The Use of Scripture in Counseling

The Bible is the only textbook believers need to help counselees with their problems. Jay Adams explains why this bold statement is not only true, but gives hope to both the counselor and his counselee. Here he outlines the basis and purpose for using the Scriptures in counseling and lists these goals for the Biblical counselor:

• Understand and evaluate the counselee’s problem scripturally.
• Seek to understand the Holy Spirit’s purpose (telos) in every Scripture passage used in counseling.
• Strive to meet each counselee’s problem with God’s full solution.

He cautions that the goals can be achieved only by counselors who “allow neither a distortion, dilution, nor admixture of the Biblical data to enter the counseling situation, whether introduced by the counselee or the counselor’s own misuse of the Scriptures.”

Here is specific help for all who want to do truly biblical counseling. As all have come to expect from the pen of Jay Adams, his guidelines are clear and understandable, the directions are explicit, and the examples given are pointed and practical.

JAY E. ADAMS, AB, BD, STM, Ph.D. (1929-2020) served as a pastor, church planter, denominational executive, seminary professor, author, and lecturer. He taught homiletics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and was the Director of Advanced Studies at Westminster Seminary in California. He was the founder of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF), the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (formerly NANC), and the Institute for Nouthetic Studies (INS). Adams was the author of over 100 books including the best-seller Competent to Counsel which launched the modern biblical counseling movement. He was a recipient of The Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor awarded by the State of South Carolina.