Whatever Happened to the Holy Spirit?

by

John MacArthur
All Rights Reserved

I recently listened aghast as a Christian psychologist on live radio counseled a caller to express anger at his therapist by making an obscene gesture at him.

"Go ahead!" he told the caller. "It's an honest expression of your feelings. Don't try to keep your anger inside."

"What about my friends?" the caller asked. "Should I react that way to all of them when I'm angry?"

"Why, sure!" this counselor said. "You can do it to anyone, whenever you feel like it. Except those who you think won't understand--they won't be good therapists for you."

That's a paraphrase. I have a tape of the entire broadcast, and what the counselor actually said was much more explicit, even to the point of being inappropriate to print.

That same week, I heard another popular Christian broadcast that offers live counseling to callers nationwide. A woman called and said she has had a problem with compulsive fornication for years. She said she goes to bed with "anyone and everyone" and feels powerless to change her behavior.

The counselor suggested that her conduct is the result of wounds inflicted by a passive father and an overbearing mother.

"There's no simple road to recovery," this radio therapist told her. "Your problem won't go away immediately--it's an addiction, and these things usually require extended counseling. You will probably need years and years of therapy to overcome your need for illicit sex."

What kind of advice is that? First, the counselor in effect gave that woman permission to defer obedience to a clear command of Scripture: "Flee immorality" (1 Cor. 6:18). He seemed to be suggesting she could taper off gradually instead.

But worse, he gave his nationwide audience the clear message that he has no real confidence in the Holy Spirit's power to transform a person's heart and behavior.

Contrast both counselors' advice with the profound simplicity of Galatians 5:16: "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh."

Do we really think "years and years of therapy" can teach any- one to walk by the Spirit? Certainly not if the therapist is someone who encourages obscene gestures as an expression of honesty.

Have you noticed that contemporary Christianity is obsessed with counseling and psychotherapy, and almost no one talks about the Holy Spirit anymore?

Whatever happened to the Holy Spirit? The church seems to have turned away from His ministry in pursuit of a pragmatic, man-centered, psychological sanctification.

This trend is evident in many of the popular books on Christian psychology. They offer all kinds of advice for struggling Christians. But the Holy Spirit is conspicuously absent. Rarely is any mention made of His power or ministry in the life of a believer. Little is said about walking in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, or yielding to the Spirit.

Instead they usually offer a hodgepodge of current psycholog- ical thinking and clever, pragmatic methodology. In short, most of these books are more of the same kind of shallow "psycho-theology" one seems to hear everywhere these days. It's as if the church has gone to the other extreme from its preoccupation with the Holy Spirit in the previous decade.

I'm convinced that what we're seeing is one of the most subtle and effective attacks Satan has ever mounted against the church. By substituting an artificial, non-supernatural simulation of sanctification, he is turning Christians away from the real source of spiritual power and victory.

More and more churches are featuring sophisticated counseling programs as the hub of their ministries. Many pastors tell me they spend more time counseling than studying to preach. Seminaries are emphasizing psychological training as a major requirement, even at the expense of biblical instruction. And the result is a generation of Christians who are virtually dependent on prolonged psychotherapy.

What's wrong with that? Several things.

First, such therapy often substitutes human wisdom for God's Word. I need to be clear in saying that I am not against all forms of counseling. Biblical counseling--that is, counsel that faithfully emphasizes the commands and principles of God's Word--is important and much needed today. There are some valuable ministries that specifically offer biblical counsel.

But sadly, most of the emphasis in Christian counseling today seems to be coming from another direction, drawing its authority from the premises and presuppositions of secular psychology--the wisdom of men--instead of God's Word.

David said, "Thy testimonies also are my delight; they are my counselors" (Ps. 119:24).

Second, this emphasis on secular psychology ignores the depravity of the human heart. Psychology says, "Get in touch with your feelings! You've got to reach deep within to understand yourself."

Scripture is clear that if we do that, we'll come up with wrong answers. Your heart will lie to you: "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9).

And if you can't understand your own heart, how can anyone else? That is a function of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God (cf. 1 Cor. 2:11; Heb. 4:12).

Third, modern psycho-Christianity fosters dependency on human counsel and psychotherapy while obscuring the source of genuine sanctification.

I heard one Christian psychologist assert that everyone has deep problems rooted in childhood conflicts. If you don't see a professional analyst regularly, he told his audience, your life is almost certainly not what it could be.

Don't be deceived by such lies. It is true that we all strug- gle with the effects of humanity's sin, but no therapist can offer deliverance from that.

"Are you so foolish?" Paul wrote the Galatians. "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Gal.3:3).

Fleshly technique and human wisdom can neither restrain sin nor produce righteousness. Those are ministries of the Holy Spirit. "Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses" (2 Cor. 10:3-4).

Only the Spirit can conquer the flesh. Galatians 5:17 says, "The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another." The flesh and the Spirit are at war with one another, so there can be no fleshly solutions to spiritual problems.

Don't settle for bogus answers. God has made a wonderful, supernatural provision:

We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.... He who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:12-16).

Remember, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh."

(c) 1989 by John F. MacArthur, Jr. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Masterpiece and is used by permission of the author. Exact copies of this file may be freely copied and distributed through computer bulletin-board networks but may not be published in any periodical without prior permission in writing from the author.

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