As a believer attending a Bible church, it’s quite likely your immediate answer to the question, “Is the Bible sufficient?” is a resounding “Yes!” And that’s to the good! But if I add the phrase “for counseling,” suddenly many of us aren’t so sure.

I have had the privilege the last few weeks of teaching a class on the topic of Biblical sufficiency in counseling. After a couple weeks of laying groundwork, we started looking at the case for Biblical sufficiency last week, and we’ll continue it this Sunday.

It’s an important question, and one that Biblical counselors have wrestled with:

“If Scripture is an overflowing source of wisdom for all counseling, then the pressing task for Christians is to be busy mining the text of Scripture for an understanding of the manifold problems people experience and for the wisdom to help them. If Scripture, through valuable and useful, is ultimately inadequate as a source of wisdom for all counseling, then the urgent work is to look to the corpus of secular psychology for those truths that supply the Bible’s lack.”[i]

But wait, you might interject. Aren’t many issues that come up in counseling issues of mental health? Aren’t many of these things medical issues that require medical solutions? Surely the claim isn’t that the Bible is sufficient for our medical problems?

No, that’s not the claim – but also yes, it kind of is the claim.

The Bible is not (and does not claim to be) sufficient for solving all our medical problems – and that would include problems that affect the brain. Brain injuries, diseases, and defects ought to be studied and cures ought to be attempted – within the boundaries of Biblical ethics and morality – and I’m thankful for the many fine folks who have dedicated their lives to just that pursuit.

But many of the problems that are commonly addressed in a counseling setting – depression, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, OCD, borderline personality disorder, etc. – have been lumped into the category of “brain disorders” without a shred of evidence to suggest they should belong there. Each time a theory of a possible physical cause of these problems is suggested by the medical community, it is eventually and inevitably debunked. The brain is certainly involved, but in the vast majority of cases, these maladies are not the result of a brain malfunction.

As Christians, we look to God’s Word as the primary source of all truth, and that includes the truth about what humans are and how humans work. Because of this, when the Bible makes a claim about humans, we should take it seriously.

What do we see when we look to God’s Word for the true source of these problems?

Problems that have to do with the state of our hope (i.e. depression), our contentment (i.e. anxiety), our self-control (i.e. ADHD), etc., do not originate in our brain, but rather in our mind. Our minds are where all of our thoughts and intentions come from – good and bad, sinful and Christlike. The brain is the physical organ where our mind currently operates, but it won’t always be so. We know this because the Biblical mind is where our true self is located – the part of us that will one day leave this body to be present with the Lord.

This should be a cause for rejoicing! If these kinds of mental health problems are truly only physical problems, the prospects for a cure are dim. All the billions of dollars poured into the psychotherapeutic industry have resulted in some methods for managing symptoms, but they have not produced one single actual cure.

But there IS a cure for a problem of the mind – that’s what the Gospel is all about! Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:17, Colossians 2:18, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, and many passages all proclaim this truth. Though our physical bodies fade and fall apart in this lifetime, the same is not true of our minds – the mind of the believer is being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

I realize that none of this quite answers the question, “HOW does Scripture address these problems?”

That’s a good question, the answer to which has filled many of the books in my office. We as a culture have forgotten how specifically and helpfully the Bible truly does speak to these issues. We have forgotten in the last 200 years how to find the same kind of relief that believers knew how to find for the previous 1,800 years. But we can remember. That’s what Biblical counseling is all about.

I hope to see some of y’all in the last couple of Sunday School classes, and I hope to see even more of y’all in the Intro to Biblical Counseling training course we are hosting in the fall (you can register here!).

[i] (Lambert & Scott, 2012)