Review of The Gospel for Disordered Lives: An Introduction to Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling

by | Apr 15, 2025 | DBSJ Volume 28 Book Reviews

The Gospel for Disordered Lives: An Introduction to Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling, by Robert D. Jones, Kristin L. Kellen, and Rob Green. Nashville, TN: B&H, 2021. 550 pp. $44.99.

      The Gospel for Disordered Lives is the product of many years of counseling practice, instruction, research, and writing. Robert Jones, who serves as Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes from experience as a professor and former pastor. He contributed twenty of the forty chapters to this work. Kristin Kellen, a professor and counseling practitioner, contributed eleven chapters. Rob Green, a professor at Faith Bible Seminary and pastor of counseling and seminary ministries at Faith Church in Lafayette, Indiana, contributed nine chapters.

      This book is the most comprehensive introduction to biblical counseling since Jay Adams’s The Christian Counselor’s Manual (1973). The Gospel for Disordered Lives includes a solid introduction along with nearly twenty chapters on common counseling issues. The authors provide an “introductory guide to the theory and practice of Christ-centered biblical counseling” (2). They intend for the book to be used either as a textbook for colleges, universities, seminaries, and graduate schools or as a resource for counseling practitioners.

      Part 1 (chaps. 1–2) was written by Jones to give an overview of biblical counseling, which includes defining Christ-centered biblical counseling, describing who counsels, and describing in what setting they counsel. Jones defines biblical counseling as “caringly ministering God’s Word to help people handle their life struggles” (21). He argues that the Bible calls all Christians to minister the truth to one another. However, he notes that pastors have a special and clear responsibility to personally minister the Word of God to others (27). Jones believes that God has designed the context for counseling to be the local church (28).

      In Part 2 (chaps. 3–9), Green, Kellen, and Jones ground their methodology for counseling in the doctrines of Scripture, the Trinity, anthropology, and sin, showing the implications of these doctrines for biblical counseling. Since every counseling system has a source of authoritative knowledge, biblical counseling sees their driving source of truth as the Word of God. While other disciplines can inform personality and stimulate thought, they do not play a constitutive role in developing a model for counseling well (45).

      Jones strikes a helpful balance in the debate between psychiatry and biblical counseling in Chapter 6. He identifies two extremes that are often used in counseling: sin-as-condition and sin-as-choice. Psychiatry argues that man’s problems have to do with biogenetic factors (sin-as-condition). Occasionally, proponents of biblical counseling can entirely dismiss biological and genetic factors, arguing that the counselee is dealing solely with a sin issue (sin-as-choice). Jones helpfully offers an alternative, “counselors who minimize sin-as-choice risk ignoring the countless biblical commands to put off sinful behavior and put on godly words and actions. Counselors who minimize sin-as-condition might become unduly harsh and impatient with counselees who continue in sin” (75). The balance comes when the counselor helps the individual to recognize both the physical and spiritual realities of the challenges they face.

      In Chapter 7, which is titled, “Understanding Guilt, Repentance, and Forgiveness,” Jones provides a helpful treatment of some common counseling issues. Overall, the chapter is good, but it would be helpful if Jones expanded this section to include more on the mechanics of forgiveness. Additionally, it would be useful to hear the difference between a heart of forgiveness (or disposition) versus the transaction of forgiveness (e.g., Matt 18:21–35; cf. Luke 17:3–4).

In Chapter 9, Green offers an excellent four-step approach to responding to alternative counseling approaches. They are: (1) to master what the Bible says about the subject matter addressed; (2) to understand accurately and charitably what the other approach teaches; (3) to evaluate what you learned using the Bible; and (4) to explain the other approach in light of Scripture (109–13).

      In Part 3 (chaps. 10–20), Jones and Green focus on a biblical counseling methodology. These chapters serve as a practical guide to counseling well, showing how a biblical counselor helps a person move to change. Chapters 13–15 explain the methodology in some detail, which includes: (1) entering the counselee’s world by building rapport; (2) understanding the person’s needs (both perceived and biblically-informed); and (3) offering Jesus Christ and His provisions for those needs (3). Chapters 16–20 help the counselor understand and build the skills of giving hope, using homework, concluding a case well, and maintaining appropriate confidentiality. Jones provides a much needed and outstanding chapter (chap. 19) to help readers understand how a biblical counselor should counsel with unbelievers.

      Jones, Kellen, and Green each contribute in Part 4 (chaps. 21–36), with each chapter providing a common counseling issue that counselors often face. The authors seek to provide a biblically-based framework for how to think about each issue along with practical wisdom and resources for further study. A counselor may be faced with a new challenge, or he or she may need some ideas as to how to think about a given counseling topic. Part 4 serves as an excellent tool for counselors.

      Kellen’s chapter on trauma and abuse could be developed more (chap. 30). To be fair, this chapter would have been the most difficult to write for several reasons: (1) trauma and abuse are extremely complex issues in counseling; (2) trauma and abuse are hot-button words in our culture; and (3) the topics of trauma and abuse are still being explored and developed in biblical counseling. To provide a thorough and nuanced biblical approach in a short number of pages would have been a daunting task. Kellen does well to provide some biblical categories for how to think through these challenging topics. One area that could have used more explanation was her discussion on abuse. She suggests that abuse is about power and control (377). It would have been helpful to learn what she means by that and what she does not mean by that. Woke theorists also use a power and control dynamic as a way to show the disparity of privilege in our culture, and they argue that the way to counteract power and control is with equity and inclusion. The Scriptures caution the rich, but do not necessarily condemn them because they are rich. Additionally, pastors as leaders have authority over the church, but that does not mean that they are inherent abusers of their authority. Kellen clearly states that her concern is with the misuse of power and control, not that power and control are an evil dynamic on their own. But it would have been helpful if she unpacked her thoughts on abuse a bit more.

      At one point when writing about helping people who have experienced past traumas, she suggests that God created us with a “fight-or-flight-system” (385), an idea that has its roots in psychology. William Bradford Cannon was an American psychologist who studied animals in threatening situations and determined from those experiments that in a similar way, humans in a threatened state respond instinctively like animals. While there may be some help in using that idea, Kellen could have helped readers to understand where that idea shows up in Scripture.

      Kellen and Jones conclude the book with part 5, giving four chapters (chaps. 37–40) on counseling people in various age groups: children, teenagers, middle-aged adults, and older adults. The chapters show the developmental characteristics of each group coupled with biblical answers for dealing with people in various life stages.

      Jones, Kellen, and Green have provided a helpful introduction to biblical counseling and a great reference book for counselors who will encounter a range of counseling issues. Throughout the book, the authors illuminate the biblical counseling principles by using examples from their own experience.

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