What needs to change?

There was one group of people who always seemed to be on the receiving end of Jesus’s more stern rebukes.

That group was made up of those who talked a good game, but failed to live it out. For example: ‘These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me’ (Matthew 15.8). ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean’ (Matthew 23.27).

Double standards

It’s a horrible vision. People who look neat and tidy on the outside but inside reek of spiritual death. And what’s worse, they often don’t even seem to know it. Now, of course, some hypocrites are deliberately deceptive, but more seem to be totally blind to their own double standards. Can others spot their double standards? Perhaps. Can God? Always! And that’s really scary. Because it means it could be us. We could be the ones who know the gospel, study the gospel, even preach the gospel and still have Jesus say to us: ‘Hypocrites. You honour me with your lips but your heart is far from me.’ It’s a little unnerving. It may make us want to take a spiritual health check.

What sort of check-up do we need?

A surface check can only go so far. We need to get under the surface. We need to get to the heart. In the Bible the heart is the real me – the part that makes the decisions. The part that decides what I worship, what I love.

And what goes on in the heart always overflows into the rest of life. That’s why real change has to start in the heart. ‘Clean the inside of the dish’, Jesus said, ‘and then the outside will be clean also’ (Matthew 23.26). It’s not enough to conform our behaviour, Jesus wants our hearts.

And that’s where biblical counselling is focussed. It’s really just intensive disciple-ship. It means doing two bits of intensive listening. First, listening to the person. Second, listening to the Bible. And going on listening until the heart is finally exposed. That’s what’s needed if the heart is to be properly addressed. We need to know the problem before we can know how the medicine of the gospel should be applied.

So, if a man has a problem with anger, it’s not enough for him to attend a few anger management classes, because that won’t get to the heart. Which is not to say that he shouldn’t do a little anger management work (those around him may well be delighted if he did!), but it does mean something more is needed.

We need to ask: ‘What drives his anger? What wrong ideas about himself and, more importantly, about God cause him to rage as he does? Is he self-righteous, self-important or simply afraid? Does the gospel need to confront him in his grandiosity or comfort him in his fears? What exactly is the change that is needed in his heart?’

Of course all that takes time. Perhaps that’s why fruit stapling (as Paul Tripp calls it) so often seems more attractive. Just paste on a few good deeds, force a little behavioural change – after all, it’s so much quicker. But Christ will not be honoured by that change, because that person isn’t loving Christ more, they just look as if they are.

The reason we need to get better at biblical counsel is because secular counselling has such limited ambitions. It just wants me to feel better. But biblical counselling wants more. It isn’t focussed on my ease, but on Christ’s glory. And that means gradually putting aside false gods and putting love for Christ in their place. It’s the work of progressive sanctification.

Of course behaviour does matter… God wants us to do good deeds and authentic change will always show on the surface. But even if the change God is after is never less than behavioural, it is always more. It is always a change in the heart.