Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 15:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: The Place Of God’s Law In Counseling
Author: Colin Robert McCulloch

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The Place Of God’s Law In Counseling

Colin Robert McCulloch

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Abstract: Many have noted that the biblical counseling movement began with an admonitional emphasis on sin. Jay Adams’s nouthetic approach to counseling was largely centered on confrontation of sin and calls to obedience. This emphasis implies the importance of the law of God in Christian living. Though such an emphasis has been central to the biblical counseling movement since its inception, little has been done within the movement to tap into historic resources regarding the use of the law of God. This paper argues that the biblical counseling movement would benefit from a retrieval of the historic Reformed understanding and uses of the law of God. Such a retrieval promotes a more nuanced approach to the use of the law and an increased understanding of the practicality and power of the gospel for daily living.

Key Words: biblical counseling, counseling, law and gospel, law of God, threefold use of the law

The writing, teaching, and ministry of Jay Adams (1929–2020) was controversial partly because it was confrontational. His published work from the beginning was intentionally set against non-directive, client-centered, Rogerian methods of counseling.1 In opposition to such an approach, Adams proposed an authoritative, confrontational, admonitional approach to counseling. This approach centered on identifying sinful patterns in the counselee that needed to change and helping the person through the use of Scripture in dependence upon the Holy Spirit. All of this was with the goal of replacing sinful patterns with righteous patterns of behavior.2 Several authors have shown that Adams’s work was more heavily influenced by secular psychological principles and methods than

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he explicitly acknowledged.3 However, it is undeniable that the modern biblical counseling movement has, from its inception, set itself against the most popular modern therapeutic models by focusing on the necessity of dealing with sin. Various emphases in biblical counseling such as nouthetic confrontation,4 “idols of the heart,”5 and “saints, sufferers, and sinners”6 all assume sin as being an essential variable of the counseling process.

The acknowledgment of sin as an essential consideration of the counseling pro...