CCEF Article on “The Therapeutic Gospel”
Yesterday I promised to post a few notes from the AMAZING issue of CCEF’s Summer 2007 Journal of Biblical Counseling.
I could write many words about every single article, but instead I’ll just start with the editor’s article, The Therapeutic Gospel (by Dr. David Powlison).
Truly. You should read this article! It’s amazing.
Dr. Powlison starts out be quoting the scene in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (yet another classic that I REALLY need to just SLOW DOWN and FINISH one of these days) when (fictionally!) Jesus returns to sixteenth century Spain and the “church authorities” decide to meet the “felt needs” of the people rather than “calling forth the high, holy, and difficult freedom of faith working through love” that Jesus teaches and lives. (The authorities tell Jesus, “We have corrected Your work.”)
This is the therapeutic gospel. And it’s not just in a scene from a Russian novel! It is SO often how ‘the gospel’ is preached, taught, and presented.
– “It centers exclusively around the welfare of man and temporal happiness. It discards the glory of God in Christ.”
– It “does not call for any fundamental change or direction in the human heart.”
– The therapeutic gospel “bypasses the sinful human heart. You are not the agent of your deepest problems, but merely a sufferer and victim of unmet needs. The offer of a cure skips over the sin-bearing Savior. Repentance from unbelief, willfulness, and wickedness is not the issue.” (emphasis added)
– This “gospel” may often use the name of Jesus, “but He has morphed into the meeter-of-your-needs, not the Savior from your sins.”
Dr. Powlison then goes on to remind us in page after page of Scripture and his brilliantly-worded text of the REAL Gospel.
Because of Christ and His true gospel, “my instinctual cravings are replaced by the growing awareness of true, life-and-death needs:
– I need mercy above all else.
– I want to learn wisdom, and unlearn willful self-preoccupation.
– I need to learn to love both God and neighbor.
– I long for God’s name to be honored, for His kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth.
– I need God to change me.
– I want Him to deliver me from my obsessive self-righteousness, to slay my lust for self-vindication, so that I feel my need for the mercies of Christ, so that I learn to treat others gently.
– I want to learn to endure hardship and suffering in hope, having my faith simplified, deepened, and purified.
– I need to learn, to listen, to worship, to delight, to trust, to give thanks, to cry out, to take refuge, to obey, to serve, to hope.
– I want the resurrection to eternal life.
– I need God Himself!“
Amen & Amen!
And thank God for David Powlison and CCEF.
“Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”
Blessed Friday to you–
Your friend,
Tara B.