Alongside Inc.

Counselor's Commentary: Counseling and the Incarnation

     Often evangelicals emphasize the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and rightly so. But it is important as well to grasp something of the significance of what preceded the crucifixion and the resurrection: the Incarnation. The importance of the Incarnation began to come home to me in reading some of the fictional works by C. S. Lewis. In particular the allegorical aspects of those books communicated to me in a powerful way something of what it meant for God to become a human being. In the midst of all the fiction, I began to glimpse some of the depth of a very real truth and slowly began to experience great awe and wonder at the thought of God-become-flesh.

     Scripture makes it clear that because the Lord Jesus has suffered all that a human being can suffer, He is able to understand us fully at our points of deepest pain and suffering and is able to intercede powerfully for us, representing us to the Father in an accurate, under-standing, and compassionate way. He knows every blister caused by the sandals we wear, He knows the pain, and He knows just what we need even when we do not know ourselves. As we go to Him in our pain, we can experience His perfect and complete understanding and compassion. We can trust His understanding and love, and we can actively hope in His power to intervene on our behalf.

     While a counselor cannot understand a counselee’s suffering in a perfect and complete way as the Lord Jesus does, a skilled clinician certainly can enter into a counselee’s pain in a way that is significantly empathic. In so doing, the counselor walks alongside the counselee through the rough places, strengthening the counselee simply through being an understanding presence. How many times does not Scripture record the Lord Jesus as saying, “I will not leave you,” or, “I will come to you.” And just before His ascension, He repeated this theme, saying He would come again, that He would return and receive us to Himself. (“Welcome” is the connotation in Greek of the word translated “receive.” What a thought, that He will welcome us!) He also said He would send Another Comforter, just like Himself, to come alongside of the believer who is lost or lonely or confused or in pain. He makes it abundantly clear that a crucial need in the hard places in life is for the suffering person to be accompanied by someone who understands and cares.  This the counselor can do—not perfectly, but substantially. And in so doing, the Christian counselor very much walks in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus as well as in the sandals of the counselee.

     But the priesthood of the Lord Jesus does not end with entering empathically into the suffering of His followers. Because He understands so well what they are experiencing, He is able to intercede for them powerfully. Likewise the Christian counselor, understanding deeply the pain of the counselee, perhaps can pray more accurately for the counselee’s needs than the counselee can pray for him- or herself. Also, in many cases the counselor has come to a place of greater spiritual as well as emotional maturity and is in a position to be able to intercede powerfully on behalf of the counselee. In this way, too, the counselor follows in the incarnational footsteps of the Lord Jesus.

     In His Incarnation, the Lord Jesus did not learn only to represent the human person to God. He also very much represented God to people. John 1:14 states that the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” among us. The tabernacle was the place of God’s presence, the place where a person could come to meet God. And the Lord Jesus was just that—the meeting place between God and man. To be in His presence was to be in the presence of the Father. To know Him was to know the Father. He showed humanity Who God is.

     The believing counselor also has the privilege of being a meeting place between the counselee and God. The counselor is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and is a temple of that Spirit. As such, the counselor can mediate the healing presence of the Father and the counselor can represent the One Who heals, leading the counselee more deeply into the very heart of that One. What a tremendous privilege—to be called by God to be an incarnational counselor!

     Jeanne L. Jensma, M.R.E., Ph.D., Clinical Director