My friend Bob Kellemen has released a new book Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives and I thought my readers would benefit from the 20 twitter-sized summaries of the key points from his book.

  1. To view the Bible accurately and use the Bible competently we must understand the Bible’s story the way God tells it—as a gospel victory narrative.
  2. The supremacy of Christ’s gospel, the sufficiency of Christ’s wisdom, and the superiority of Christ’s Church provide the wisdom we need for counseling in a broken world.
  3. We discover wisdom for how to live life in a broken world from the wisest person who ever lived—Christ!
  4. We must know the Trinitarian Soul Physician personally to be a powerful soul physician.
  5. To know the God of peace and the peace of God we must know our Triune God in the fullness of His holy love demonstrated in the cross of Christ
  6. Because Satan attempts to plant seeds of doubt about God’s good heart, God calls us to crop the Christ of the cross back into the picture.
  7. The whole, healthy, holy person’s inner life increasingly reflects the inner life of Christ—relationally, rationally, volitionally, and emotionally.
  8. Biblical counselors pursue compassionate and wise counseling where our love abounds in depth of knowledge about the heart in the world 
  9. The essence of sin is spiritual adultery—choosing to love anyone or anything more than God.
  10. Sin is not just a thief caught in a crime; sin is an adulterer caught in the act.
  11. Apart from Christ we’re condemned as adulterous spouses, dead in sin, separated from the life of God with depraved heart capacities enslaved to sin.
  12. Sin is what personal beings imagine, think, choose, do, and feel as they desire and love anything or anyone more than Christ.
  13. Fully biblical gospel-centered counseling deals thoroughly both with the sins we have committed and with the evils we have suffered.
  14. We must build our biblical counseling models of change on Christ’s gospel applied to Christians—justified, reconciled, regenerated, and redeemed people.
  15. Through regeneration our new heart has a new want to; through redemption our new heart has a new can do.
  16. Together with all the saints the church is the place to belong to Christ and the Body of Christ and to become like Christ.
  17. Sanctification is a community journey.
  18. As saints who struggle with suffering and sin, we must crop back into the picture our future purity (the wedding) and future victory (the final war).
  19. Sanctification is the art of applying our complete salvation by God’s grace, Spirit, Word, people, and future hope so we increasingly reflect Christ.
  20. Gospel-motivated and empowered heart change puts off and puts on affections, mindsets, purposes, and mood states so we increasingly reflect the heart of Christ.