All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95) published by the Lockman Foundation

The New Testament description of God’s people portrays a community of loving brothers and sisters who are devoted to the good of one another. Like most families, this inherently involves the activities of sharing and receiving useful information, encouragement, and instruction, as the family unit works as a team to meet each other’s goals. Such is the basic ideal of the body of Messiah on the earth. In the writings of the apostles, we see a group of people united by faith and love in Jesus, empowered by the loving presence of the Holy Spirit, and endeavoring to learn, teach, and encourage living that pleases the Lord. A vital part of this, of course, is the practice of verbally counseling or advising others in how to think and act according to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

The Scriptures are replete with promises, descriptions, warnings, explanations, and commands that highlight the necessity of Christians actively engaging one another in compassionate, constructive, corrective, and commanding discussion. This is one of the main ways that the Lord’s overarching commission for the apostles must be fulfilled – “make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded . . .” (Mt. 28:19-20). A central aspect of this teaching can rightly be called “counseling”.

What do I mean by “counseling”? Christian counseling is the intimate, brotherly, and careful use of God’s truth and wisdom to solve the various moral, mental, and emotional problems that believers suffer from. It is one or more believers dealing with the distressing issues of another believer through direct and appropriate communication of the knowledge that will enable the sufferer to understand his problem, and take the right action to solve it.

Why am I addressing this practice? Because western Christians clearly have a grave deficiency in their ability and willingness to counsel one another. There are several hindrances that we face in the westernized, technological, world, in communicating to one another as the Scriptures instruct us to.

Engrained Individualism and Selfishness

One major factor that prevents western Christians from taking an active role in dealing with one another’s problems is that so few believers have deep, personal, and brotherly relationships with the believers they regularly come across. In spite of the fact that the Lord’s body is supposed to be a family, western culture so exalts and promotes people as individuals that many Christians believe they can get along in their lives largely by dealing with their problems without the help of brethren outside their household. This has contributed to the vast problem of Christian assemblies in which most of the attendants have little to do with one another, besides seeing each other each week. And even apart from the weekly assembly, most western Christians have no intimate friendships outside of their own immediate families. Such separation and isolation from other believers provides barely any opportunity, or motivation, for taking an active role in one another’s affairs, let alone one another’s problems.

Worse than this is the self-centeredness that is promoted by our rugged individualism. Most western believers are so focused on their own lives, that they give little to no consideration of the problems facing their brethren in Jesus. Even if they make a polite effort to learn the conditions of their closest Christian friends, few of them use the time and effort necessary to meaningfully invest in learning the deepest issues that their friends face. This avoidance of searching for ways in which to help our brethren is usually just a blatant manifestation of cold selfishness, and thus a lack of concern for our brother or sister’s well-being.

Unhealthy Reliance on the Internet

Closely linked to the individualism that so pervades the thinking and behavior of western Christians is our obsessive use of the Internet to answer most of our questions, and provide us with most of our advice. Gone are the days when you would have to find an actual person to help you with your problems. Now, we can just pick up our phones, type in any question we have, and find a multitude of sources of seemingly trustworthy information or advice. But this dependence on the great database of all the world’s information leads us away from the life-giving importance of using our beloved brothers and sisters to provide us with the wisdom that perfectly suits our situations. There is no replacement for counsel from a friend who knows us ten times better than any Internet adviser.

Ignorance of the Relevant Truth

As worshipers of the Lord, our rule (or standard) of faith and practice is the body of holy Scripture. And yet an overwhelming number of western believers have a profound ignorance of what Scripture actually says. Even if they understand the basics of Scripture’s teaching, they usually don’t have enough of a grasp of its details to enable them to effectively address most of the spiritual problems in their lives. Bereft of a solid grounding in the teachings of the apostles, believers are usually ignorant of what action to take, or what information to share, with another Christian who is facing a burdensome personal issue for which he has no solution.

Faced with these obstacles to our engagement in brotherly counseling, I believe it’s necessary to take a fresh look at the apostolic teaching on counseling. This will require us to take a survey of several reasons why counseling is regarded as needed in the New Testament. By looking at some situations that the early Christians were hurt by, and how the apostles instructed them, we can see how so many of our brethren in Messiah are in desperate need of counseling, and how we can start thinking about how to provide the right advice to them. Thus, we’ll next look at a few major problems that need to be addressed through spiritual counseling.

Counsel Yourself

Some questions for your own self-counseling:

  1. Are you so connected to your brothers and sisters with whom you meet on a regular basis that counseling each other is a natural part of your relationships?
  2. Are you concerned enough about your brethren that you regularly ask them about their spiritual progress?
  3. How often do you ask your brethren for advice or counsel in comparison to seeking it from Internet sources?
  4. How knowledgeable are you of Scripture’s teaching on Christian thinking and living in a form by which you can explain that knowledge to others?