Christian Counseling Education Program can give those in grief deep insights by comparing one’s grief to Christ. In
regards to Christ, the pinnacle of mental human anguish would be to foresee one’s death, especially if that death involved torture and pain at the highest levels. Jesus experienced this intense mental grief to the extent he sweat blood.It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that Christ heroically, in all his humanity, accepted the burden of sin and its cruel bite.The divine nature of Christ foresaw, while the human nature trembled and accepted the horrible tortures of the whippings, thorns, cross and nails that would be instruments in his painful death.Yet within the two wills of Christ blended a perfect harmonious person, one in person, two in nature, but undivided in his acceptance of this pain.This pain that Christ felt in the garden was a true mental torture.He was completely human, not a phantasm, or incomplete shell for the divine, but a human person, free from sin, but nonetheless submitted to the same psychological torture any man would face in such terrible tribulation.In this one must stand in awe of Christ’s heroic personality. In his deepest grief, even as his friends fall asleep for that one hour, Christ prays and accepts his cross, his suffering and his grief as God’s will. He does not flee the scene, use his divine powers, or wager with the Father, but instead heroically and triumphantly accepts the pains and grief he will endure for the love of the world. Within this drama unfolds two equally intriguing elements of Christ’s passion. One is theological and involves God’s plan for the salvation of the world and the other involves the praxis of acceptance and example.
Christian Counseling Implications
The first theological implication involves analogy and pre-figurement. Only scripture in its intricate beauty can parallel two events that were forever bound together. The first is Christ as the New Adam. The Old Adam in the Garden of Eden, followed his own will and befell the temptation of the serpent, or Lucifer. The New Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane, follows the will of the Father and crushes the head of the serpent; with the Old Adam, humanity fell, with the New Adam, humanity was raised.
The second implication is more personal. It does not involve the salvation of everyone but involves individual example Christ gives to one. Christ reveals in his most vulnerable state what it means to accept the crosses of this world and how we must all accept our crosses. No matter what grief or pain may become of it, Christ presents himself as the perfect paradigm and example on how a Christian should and must accept his daily crosses. Christian Counseling sessions should emphasize this ideal.
This is a bitter sweet reality. Christ’s passion should make us all weep, but unlike a distant deity, Christ is a deity that not only teaches via example, but ultimately sheds his own blood for his people and rises triumphantly. This should give anyone in grief a light of hope that after suffering always comes resurrection. This ideal should also be utilized by Christian Counselors in their sessions.
