God is from Himself, dependent on nothing, unchanging, and ultimate in being and authority. That’s the message you will pick up on if you read the Scriptures. God needs nothing outside of Himself. This is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of the Absoluteness of God. Understanding this doctrine has massive implications for biblical counseling. Because God is Absolute we can offer believers genuine and solid hope.
When we discuss this doctrine we can break it down into four categories. The Absoluteness of God includes His self-existence, sufficiency, immutability, sovereignty, and supremacy. Let’s take a quick look at these categories before we seek to apply this doctrine to Biblical counseling.
First, God is self-existent. He exists from Himself. He has all the resource for existence within Himself and needs nothing external. Two texts in particular capture this idea, and in different ways. In Exodus 3:14 God reveals himself to Moses saying, “I Am who I Am.” God’s name reveals pure, underived being—He simply is. Additionally, in John 5:26 we read:
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
Life is not received by God; it originates in Him. As Herman Bavinck said, “All being is contained in Him. He is a boundless ocean of being” (Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation. 151). God is self-existent.
Second, God is sufficient. God doesn’t need anything external to himself. In Acts 17:24-25 we are told that God is “not served by human hands as though he needed anything.” The Psalmist tells us that God owns everything. Speaking through the Psalmist, God himself says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine” (Ps. 50:10-12). Likewise, the Apostle Paul tells us that God is the unconditioned source and end of all reality:
Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Rom. 11:35)
God is completely self-sufficient and needs nothing else external to Himself.
Third, God is immutable. Immutability is the theological term which means that God is unchanging. God does not become more or less than He already is. In Malachi 3:6 the Lord says of Himself, “I do not change.” And the Apostle James echoes this when he assures his readers that with God there is “no variation…or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). God is always all that He is.
Fourth, God is sovereign. Here we mean to say that God is utterly free. He is not constrained by anything outside of His own will. As Nebuchadnezzar declared in Daniel 4:35:
He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’
He is completely free to do whatever He chooses to do. He is accountable to no one, and no one can stop Him from doing what He wants. In Isaiah 46:9-10 we learn that God’s counsel will stand perfectly, and He will always accomplish all that He purposes. Likewise, Psalm 115:3 tells us that God does all that He pleases. His sovereignty means He is always in control and can do whatever, whenever He wants.
Fifthly, and finally, the Absoluteness of God tells us that He is supreme. Nothing stands above or beyond Him. Revelation 4:11 says boldly:
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
God is supreme over the created world. The world exists only because He created it and, as a result, He is worthy of all praise and adoration. Likewise, as Hebrews 3:1 tells us, it is God who upholds the universe. He is supreme over all other things in existence.
God is absolute. He is the self-existent, independent, unchanging source and end of all things, whose being and purposes are conditioned by nothing outside Himself. But what does this have to do with Biblical Counseling? In what ways does this doctrine impact our counseling philosophy or practice? Our doctrine of God has massive implications for our counseling, or at least it should. Let’s look at how the doctrine of the Absoluteness of God empowers our counseling and our counsel.
Application to Biblical Counseling
For starters, the absoluteness of God gives us confidence in our counsel. We are not speaking of a God who has weaknesses, limitations, frailties, or imperfections. He is not fickle and prone to change. Who He testifies to be is who He will always be. As we counsel, then, we have confidence that we can boldly declare God and His promises to our counselees.
His absoluteness grounds honest confrontation and genuine comfort. There are times where counseling requires confrontation, calling people to repent and turn to the Lord. If God were dependent, malleable, or reactive, counseling would drift toward appeasement, emotional management, or a “what works for you” philosophy. But because God is absolute sin can be named honestly. We can rightly call people to account. This keeps biblical counseling from becoming therapeutic permissiveness.
We can also genuinely offer people comfort. Because God is stable His words of love, assurance, forgiveness, and grace are true too. When we read 1 John 1:9 to our counselee we can do so confident of the grace offered in it. Comfort is as real as confrontation.
There will be no new additions to God, to His mind, His plan, or His power. There will be no new editions of God. He will not evolve into some greater or lesser version of Himself. The God who is proclaimed in Scripture is the God to whom we are able to confidently point people. The promises and plans He declares in His Word are stable places to take our counselees. We have confidence so long as our counsel is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and the God who authored them. This leads us naturally to the next point.
Secondly, the counsel we offer is stable when it is firmly planted in the soil of Scripture. Our counselees, then, can have confidence. God will not change on them. He is trustworthy, reliable, and true. All who hope in the Lord will not be put to shame (Ps. 25:3; Rom. 10:11). The God we are calling on our counselees to trust is the God who is the Supreme Authority over all things. He is the one whose will always stands and is always accomplished. He can be trusted.
One important practical implication for the counselee is that God’s absoluteness relativizes all other authorities in their life. Because God is absolute, no human voice is ultimate – not the counselor’s, not the counselee’s inner critic, not a parent, spouse, abuser, church leader, or diagnosis. This is quietly liberating. Shame loses its godlike power. Fear loses its final word. Trauma narratives are no longer sovereign explanations of reality. In counseling, this means that we are not asking people to submit to a technique, a therapist, or even their own story, but to a God who stands above all stories. Because God is absolute, no experience, however powerful, gets to define reality more than He does.
Conclusion
The doctrine of the Absoluteness of God is profoundly important for believers, and it is a powerful therapeutic resources for Biblical Counseling. As Christians and as Biblical Counselors particularly, we should seek to grow in our knowledge and the comfort of this doctrine so that we can implement it well into our practice. This is the first in a series of posts that will explore this doctrine and will, I hope, provide an opportunity for us all to grow in this doctrine.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 