The Letter to the Romans: Message #9 – Chapter 15

Now, the first thing I would say to you is obviously the New Testament church did not have Christian counselors. What did they do with people who were kleptomaniacs? What did they do with people who hear voices? What did they do with the Peeping Tom? What did they do with latent lesbians and latent homosexuals? What did they do with sisters who were afraid to get married and brothers who hate women? About young single brothers whose whole relationship with women is that of antagonism. What do you do with these subjective things? What do you do? Tell them to pray and read their bible? I will never buy into that.

Would you like to hear what happens to a group of Christians outside the organized church who turned to Christian counseling? Do you like to hear what happened? I’m the only authority on this in the world. I say that in fact, the only authority on this in the world. You will find it very fascinating. It’s nothing like what you’ll expect. In every case, without exception, there was a power play to take over the church. A power play to take over the church. I think every one of us feels he’s strong somewhere; that’s going to cause you trouble. None of us has any right to boast, or to think of ourselves higher than anyone else. Your time comes, and so mine, and that’s true of even the most broken vessel. It seems that the most broken vessel of God, as he or she walks down the journey of life, one day the card turns over, and they face something. This holy, holy person faces something that they absolutely cannot handle, in an area of their life they did not believe was vulnerable, or perhaps they didn’t even know that area of life existed. You start off with a great deal of tolerance with one another. I wish that all Christians lived in community, and I’ll tell you right now, there would be a lot fewer Christians. So, you’re saying, Gene, you want more people to go to hell? No, I’m just telling you that we should never have gotten off on evangelism the way we did. Evangelism outside the church, or outside the community of believers. Are you following all that? If evangelism had always been within the community of believers, most people would reject the Christian faith. A lot of us just took out fire insurance and went on our merry way.

Christians who went to them were steadily drawn into those people’s lives and made more dependent on them, and they began to seek to become the controlling factor in their lives. That’s what happened in almost every case, with one or two exceptions, and those were Christian counselors who said, “You run about four or five Christians, outside the organized church, you run them through a Christian counselor’s office, and here they are, people who will speak frankly and openly and trustingly, and they come in there with their gosh-awful problems, and we don’t send anybody to these people except folks who are really just horrible messes.” And the Christian counselor, having never met Christians before who lived in community, but he’s down here in the Baptist church, or he’s teaching in some Christian university, he thinks all their problems stem from the fact that they’re in a community, and his one advice to all of them is to get out of the Christian community. So, it’s either that they tell you to get out, because they don’t understand where they are, or they start a power play. They do not hold to the unity of the body of Christ. That’s not happened to me in one place, and that’s not happened to me in two places; that’s happened to me in three places.

The other problem that has come…there are two things that have typified all of them. The other one is those who have gotten really into Christian counseling, not teaching it, but getting into being helped by it, had been lost to their former commitment to Jesus Christ. They all still love the Lord; they would tell you that nothing has changed, but something shifted; they would even tell you that they have acknowledged the cross in their lives and that they’ve learned more about the cross from the Christian counseling they received than anywhere else, and they will use the term “the cross, the cross, the cross”, but the fact of the matter is they had left the cross. Evangelism is no longer important. Saving the world is no longer important. The church of Jesus Christ becomes secondary in their lives, and all of these things that you and I give our hearts to because we’re not very smart…you know, we’re down here giving our whole lives to a Stucco building without any windows in it and caring for one another…all of those values cease, and the major preponderant view of their life is to find out all the things in them that are motivating them and why they, the husband, the wife, can’t get along, and they get into being transformed by the Lord, that’s what they get into. Now that’s their words, not mine, but the whole thing comes to center on their own life, and the life of the church crumbles. They get very, very logical about everything. Reasonable and deep spiritual things, which they once held with all their hearts, no longer resound in their ears or in their spirits; they just bounce off them. They are interested in improving and perfecting themselves inside. The zeal for Christ is replaced with an intense desire to be transformed by Christ, but it’s not that at all; it’s an infatuation with the soul, with understanding themselves, even though the Lord’s name is used as often as ever. Did you follow that? Now that’s for those who really get into it; I have. Looking back on my ministry, I see two kinds of people. I see brothers and sisters who never went to Christian counselors. They refused to. Sometimes they made me angry because they wouldn’t go, really messed up people. They wouldn’t go even though they were hurting badly. They were too proud to go. I said to myself. And there were those who went.

Now, time has passed. I wish I could have started out smart.  The Lord gave me so much wisdom in this business. I felt that I wouldn’t make a mistake this big, and I want to tell you this: I consider it the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my ministry, and I’m really desirous of getting this on video and every kind of tape. I’m not ashamed, I’m always about being upfront about the church. How’s the church doing? Doing terribly. How’s the church doing? Doing wonderful. If you hear me saying it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful. If I tell you it’s terrible, it’s terrible, and my ministry is an open book as far as I’m concerned. The brothers and sisters who suffered their pains in their marriages, who got no help from Christian counselors, today are in their 40s and their mid-40s, and there is a depth of Christ to them of which I boast, of which I am proud, and that which was real to them in their youth, is going on. Those who have gotten into Christian counseling, and I take it, I take responsibility for it, unless something radically changes in their lives, 15 years from now, there’s still going to be sitting around talking about, “Well, we were very foolish back when we were young,” or something like that, and all I can tell you is that they have circumvented agony. When something really tough gets into their life, they go to a Christian counselor and get delivered from it. And that’s wonderful, and yet it has extracted a toll, and that toll is the centrality of Christ in their life, and you know, I take responsibility because, after all, I’m the one who encouraged them to go to a counselor.

I didn’t know this was going to happen, but you know what my problem is? I can’t stand seeing other people hurt when I see a Christian in pain. I want to help him. I see a marriage in trouble; I want to get in there and help it. Christian, who’s a kleptomaniac or a peeping tom, I want to get in there and help them, so I send them to…I do all I can… and I send it to someone who has been trained to handle that kind of thing, and they get help. You know, they’re getting more and more normal all the time, but the brothers and sisters who didn’t get Christian help are getting deeper in Christ, and there is a piece of God in their lives and an orientation to Christ with which I boast, and cannot boast of that; that deep sense of Christ is out of their lives, and those psychopaths who did not go to Christian counselors are, in fact, today as well, or better off with all of than those who did.

I look at this little group of people meeting down here in Rome, Italy, or in Chicago, Illinois, and I say to you, dig in, fellow, with all of your strange peculiarities, and know that it’s going to take a lifetime of the Lord’s work in your life. It’s going to take a lifetime of the Lord’s work in your life, and all the Christian Counseling in the world can never put you or me in touch with the motives of our hearts. Boy, that’s a big statement for me to make. That’s revolutionary for Gene Edwards to make that statement. There is only one that can do that, and that is God. Only God. That’s a scripture: only God knows our motives, and they will not be revealed until the judgment. I think every Christian counselor that I have known, well, I’ve watched him do what I’ve just charged them with doing, and Gene Edwards; we have all dealt with so many hurt people and see the inner motives of their hearts working against them, that we get obsessed with trying to help them understand their inner motivation, and so doing, we deprive them of the cost of Jesus Christ.

I’ve watched the brothers and sisters who’ve all gotten in touch with the inner motives of their hearts, and why they do something is because of their childhood and all that. And you know what? I’ve been watching this long enough to make the statement, and I will make it, and I wish that everything I’m saying tonight can be heard by everyone. I have noticed that they do not change. The whole point of Christian counseling is to see someone change, and I have seen profound changes take place in their lives, but now I have watched them for years later, and then I’ve discovered it is not change; it is redirection. And that is not change. I watched a brother who is just an overbearing buzzard with his wife, and they go through Christian counseling, and their marriage is saved, and the guy changes his ways, and everything looks beautiful. You say Gee-whiz, thank God, and then you discover a little later that he is still a belligerent, overbearing human being; he’s just started in on the church, on his former friends, on his father, or his mother, he has redirected his…I guess I’m telling you that only God can change us, saints.

Now I’m not crying or sad; in fact, I am using this opportunity to make a declaration that, for the past 25 years…I am giving a testimony of what has happened because Gene Edward cannot stand watching brothers and sisters hurt. I am asking God for grace to watch you hurt. Now, one of the reasons it hurts me so badly to see you hurt so badly is that I have hurt so badly. And being on that cross is not fun, having all these problems of your childhood and youth, and marriage, and all that. That’s no fun, and I really want to deliver you, but I’m not going to do it anymore, and that’s a hard, hard statement for me to make. I am compassionate toward the needs of the saints; very compassionate. I will give you a few words of help here and there, but I’m not going to take you from here to the end of the year trying to help you, and I will not ever again send you to a Christian counselor for a long period of time, but I reserve the right to send you to one for two or three times, for some quirk in you. I mean, you boys running around here in a dress; maybe we do need to send you somewhere, you know, some outrageous thing, but I will never again encourage Christian counseling within the church. That page has not been written on a true biblical Christian, caring in the church of Jesus Christ. It hasn’t been written yet. There are several organizations and movements that call themselves biblical Christian counseling. They are not; they just use that name to get away with it, and they are among those who cause the greatest amount of damage.

Then Gene Edwards, will you please tell us what we do? I have been going through this New Testament, and you’ve got more to hear from me. I’m asking you an honest question. I’m not playing with verses. I’m looking at the scripture as I have looked at it concerning the church. I am now asking the question: how did Christians take care of all these wild, maniacal, weird things Christians do? To whom do you turn, and what do you do?

The first thing I would say is the church needs to be very, very aware that it exists, and we need to be very compassionate, as long as compassion can be mustered up, and then we need to get those three or four brothers voting on a little slip of paper, and when things just get beyond that which is tolerable, somebody needs to confront him, but that’s not the solution. Those are band-aids to save the whole church from obliteration. What of you, and what of me concerning our transformation? The interesting thing about it is that I have never really been helped by Christian counseling myself. I think the thing that has probably helped me, and perhaps I can speak for my wife, more than anything else, that I don’t find in the scripture here, is simply to understand…well, it’s in here, but it’s not that easy to find…it’s to understand people’s different dispositions and really understand that my wife is not my enemy. God really made her that precise, and for me to understand that she’s not on my case to inflict pain. That’s the way my wife is, and for my wife to come to understand that I will never be able to put my clothes away, that I am wild, and that I really cannot write or spell, and it’s not because I’m lazy. I really can’t. And that I am outgoing, and all of these things—it’s been the most helpful thing of all for us to just learn to accept the other one and know that God made them that way, which is basically what we just got through talking about.

I have always understood one thing, and I have always understood the other, but I have not allowed it to take free place in my ministry. There are two things, and if we ever back away from those two things, I would say, generally speaking, the work of God stops in our lives. The first one is so important, but it is not something we will do on our own outside the body of Christ; and within the body of Christ, it is perhaps our single greatest task. And for you, Alex, and for you, Linda, and for you, Stanley, and for any of you who will ever lead and direct the church, it is, I would say, your number one task. I will tell you what I did and have done and will do in the fellowship of those I work with, will make sure that as a people we behold the Lord, as a mirror beholds me. I didn’t say pray. I said we will behold the Lord, and as long as we have ever been able to maintain that, then we have always been open to part two. So, when this has died down, this has always suffered. Now that’s not true of everybody. That’s just those who stick around permanently. You understand what I mean? Most people don’t stick around here permanently. Have you figured that out yet? And I suppose that’s part of the church’s task: to behold Him as a mirror beholds a person, to come before him and know Him and touch Him.