Quotes by Jay Adams
Jay Adams (1929–2020) — Theologe, Buchautor und Begründer der biblischen/nouthetischen Seelsorge · Reformiert / Presbyterianisch (evangelikal-konservativ) · USA
Jay Adams (1929–2020) war ein US-amerikanischer presbyterianisch-reformierter Theologe, Pastor und Autor. Er begründete die nouthetische Seelsorge, die säkulare Psychologie strikt ablehnt und seelische Probleme primär auf sündiges Fehlverhalten zurückführt, das biblischer Zurechtweisung bedarf. Während sein Ansatz in konservativ-evangelikalen Kreisen als Rückbesinnung auf die Bibel geschätzt wird, kritisieren Fachleute und Seelsorger den oft konfrontativen Stil sowie die Vernachlässigung psychischer und organischer Krankheitsursachen.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Relationships & Family, Ethical Questions, Growth & Character, Love, Guilt & Forgiveness, Church & Congregation, Wisdom & Understanding, Grace & Redemption
Quotes by Jay Adams
The best way to be a good father to your children is to be a good husband to their mother.
Jay Adams
The negative calls attention to itself, so it is easier to focus on the negative… [Parents] must not forget the times when the kids did obey and did do the right things… It takes effort to commend the good – much more than it does to condemn the bad.
Jay Adams
Husbands and wives frequently complain that they are having trouble with sex, but the trouble usually is not with sex. Counselors do not find many difficulties that have to do with sex alone. The real difficulties in bed at night come from the fact that all kinds of problems have been carried into bed from the day, problems that should have been settled before going to bed.
Jay Adams
Even though all divorces are the result of sin, not all divorces are sinful.
Jay Adams
When we learn to love, we also learn to cover, forget, and pass over many faults of others.
Jay Adams
Over the years the emphasis in discipline should move from structured discipline to self-discipline. Parents must “coach” their children, but learn to back off as their children learn to assume responsibilities.
Jay Adams
You must not exhort your congregation to do whatever the Bible requires of them as though they could fulfill those requirements on their own, but only as a consequence of the saving power of the cross and the indwelling, sanctifying power and presence of Christ in the Person of the Holy Spirit
Jay Adams
It is not the nagging, but the behavior, that shows Christ in a life. The quiet winsomeness of a wife speaks eloquently of Jesus Christ.
Jay Adams
The man and his wife become one flesh (Gen 2:24). Together they form one complete unit. As they come together physically, intellectually, emotionally, there is a wholeness that did not exist before. They are fused into one.
Jay Adams
There are usually at least two problems involved in any human conflict. There is the issue over which the parties differ, and there is also the problem of their attitudes toward one another.
Jay Adams
Counseling Principles: 1. When seeking to bring about change, never attempt to do so in the abstract; people change only in concrete ways. 2. Always give hope. People will not persevere during the often-difficult process of change without hope. 3. Never minimize the severity of problems; instead always maximize Christ and His power to solve problems. 4. If a person has a life-dominating problem, aim at total restructuring. 5. Always approach the seemingly hopeless situations with emphatic disagreement. Empathy alone removes all possibility of help. Disagree when the counselee says, “It’s hopeless.” Say, “It is difficult, but not too difficult for God.” 6. Don’t become orientated toward people’s problems, but toward God’s solutions. 7. Gauge how much change is now feasible; too little is boring, too much is discouraging. 8. Don’t let people settle for less than the scriptural solution. 9. Use biblical, or biblically derived, language when analyzing and labeling problems, and when planning solutions to them. 10. Be command-oriented rather than feeling-oriented.
Jay Adams
Legalists assume that one can obey God’s commandments without salvation and/or in his own strength. Both ideas are false. Prayerful action…in the power of the Spirit is required for change to be biblical; all change that pleases God is the fruit of the Spirit.
Jay Adams
The word discipline has disappeared from our minds, our mouths, our pulpits, and our culture. We hardly know what discipline means in modern American society. And yet, there is no other way to attain godliness; discipline is the path to godliness.
Jay Adams
New Testament evangelists make it easy to get into the church “that very hour,” but they also make it mean something to stay in. We, in contrast, make it hard to get in, but once in the body a member usually is secure for life regardless of his beliefs or lifestyle. It is easier to remain a member of the average church today than it is to continue one’s membership in a lodge! If we exercised biblical care and discipline, we would have little or no difficulty in adopting and following the biblical pattern.
Jay Adams
To become “one flesh”…is to become “one person.” Male and female marriage partners not only make an exact “fit” sexually, but their maleness and femaleness “fill out” or “complete” one another in every respect. The two constitute a “whole.”
Jay Adams
But the last thing that a parent must do is to cut off communication. So, on the one hand he surely must discourage backtalk; but on the other he must never discourage genuine discussion, which includes giving reasons, explanations, and information that a child feels compelled to talk about… Parents, therefore, must learn to distinguish between the backtalk that needs to be silenced and the valid communication that needs to be encouraged.
Jay Adams
Salvation is complete; it involves justification, sanctification, and glorification. By grace, through faith, God justifies believers in an instantaneous act. That is to say, Christ died for His people in order that the penalty for their sins might be paid and His righteousness might be counted to them. They are declared just before God when they believe. Once justified, Christ saves them from the power of their sins through the lifelong process of sanctification. In sanctification, Christians are made more and more like Jesus Christ. But a lifelong process never ends, and the final goal is never reached until death. At death, Christians are glorified; they are then made completely perfect for the first time.
Jay Adams
The purpose of preaching, then, is to effect changes among the members of God’s church that build them up individually and that build up the body as a whole. Individually, good pastoral preaching helps each person in the congregation to grow in his faith, conforming his life more and more to biblical standards. Corporately, such preaching builds up the church as a body in the relationship of the parts to the whole, and the whole to God and to the world.
Jay Adams
How, then, may one know how to choose a mate? There are only two absolutely essential requirements: first, that the other person is also a Christian; second, that the two of you not only desire to but growingly give evidence of an ability to face, talk over, and solve problems together from God’s Word in God’s way. While socio-economic, ethnic, chronological, and other factors may rightly enter the picture as minor matters of preference, they are in no sense essentials. Indeed, they are icing on the cake.
Jay Adams
If you have been putting off going to another person to try to achieve reconciliation with him, you have wronged him.
Jay Adams
Discipline with dignity, then, involves not only structure that is set up to see to it that goals are reached. That is necessary, but it also considers the personal conviction of the child to do what God says to be even more vital. He was made in the image of God, and he must be reached in his heart with God’s Word. It is this message that speaks of a loving Lord who came and gave Himself for His people which first must touch our children’s hearts, bringing them to repentance and faith. Parents must lead them to repentance, lead them to conviction of sin, and bring them to the Savior. And then they must continue to show them what He wants and continue to motivate them, not just with the rod, but also by the cross.
Jay Adams
Sex in Scripture is holy, normal, right, proper and good… There is nothing wrong with sex; and marriage, indeed, is the proper framework for the expression of it. Sex according to Scripture, is not unholy of itself, but only when it is misused. It ought never to be used outside of the covenant bond. It should be used freely within this structure. God has so ordained. God strongly encourages sexual relations.
Jay Adams
God’s gifts are not given capriciously; neither are they given in such a way that the option for their use is left with us. As the gifts are discovered they are to be developed and used to the full in His service and to His glory. God distributes His gifts for His purposes and for the good of His people. His sovereign administration of these gifts must be acknowledged as right and proper by His people, even when they cannot see the good.
Jay Adams
If love has grown cold in your family, husband, you must do something about it. If you are going to emulate the love of Jesus Christ for His church, it is up to you to initiate love… Jesus loved us when we had no love for Him. You are the head of your home. If there is little or no love in that home, it is your fault. God holds you responsible to introduce love. You must do that by giving.
Jay Adams
If you are a true child of God, you will receive the blessings of the heavenly Father’s discipline in this life. So the disciplinary methods that Christian parents use should be the same as God’s. They must use nurture and admonition (or discipline and instruction). That is the kind of discipline that God Himself uses. In Deuteronomy 11:1 (Berkeley), we are urged, “Be mindful of the Lord’s discipline.” Study it, understand it, use it.
Jay Adams
Love at first is not feeling. Love first can be expressed as giving. That is at the core of love. If one gives, the feeling of love will follow. To love we must give of ourselves, of our time, of our substance, of whatever it takes to show love; for giving is fundamental to the biblical idea of love.
Jay Adams
God does not countenance the marriage of a believer to an unbeliever. In 1 Corinthians 7:39, Paul says that Christians must marry only “in the Lord.” That phrase means within the common faith that Christians hold toward Jesus Christ, that faith which identifies them as a part of the body of Christ. Thus they can be said to be “in Christ,” or “in the Lord” together. Nothing in Scripture in any way relaxes the clear-cut commandment that believers must not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Christians may marry only in the Lord; that is, only within the faith.
Jay Adams
The normal state is marriage, not celibacy. A man and wife – not single persons – were put into the garden. Celibacy is exceptional and it takes a particular gift. Indeed, God specifically declared that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). He insists, as the norm, that a man must leave his father and mother and “cleave to his wife” (Gen. 2:24). God ordained marriage for His purposes. Those purposes are outlined in Scripture.
Jay Adams
Flaunting authority is always wrong. Talking about this authority when there is no reason to be talking about it often leads to abuse. The brandishing of authority for its own sake shows that the parent fails to recognize that the authority is given for the benefit of the child. Such assertion of authority often leads to the establishment of foolish and overly rigid rules. If “His commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3), why should ours be?
Jay Adams
Jesus won’t allow the unreconciled condition to continue among believers. In Matthew 5, if another considers you to have wronged him, Jesus says that you must go. In Matthew 18, He says that if the other person has done something wrong to you, you must go. There is never a time when you can sit and wait for your brother to come to you. Jesus doesn’t allow for that. He gives no opportunity for that. It is always your obligation to go.
Jay Adams
If marriage were of human origin, then human beings would have a right to set it aside. But since God instituted marriage, only He has the right to do so. He has told us that marriage will not be dispensed with until the life to come. Nor can marriage be regulated according to human whims. Marriage as an institution (which includes individual marriages, of course) is subject to the rules and regulations set down by God. If He had said nothing more about marriage after establishing it, we might have proceeded to draw up such rules on our own. But He did not leave us in the dark; God has revealed His will about marriage in the pages of the Bible. Individuals may marry, be divorced and be remarried only if, when and how He says they may without sinning.
Jay Adams
What a wonderful Savior we have. It wasn’t lovely people for whose sake He died; it was for ungodly people, for His enemies. It was for law breakers that He suffered. He loved us, says (the Apostle) Paul, in spite of how unlovely we were. Just as He loved us, Paul insists we are to love one another.
Jay Adams
Few things are sapping the strength of the church of Jesus Christ more than the unreconciled state of so many believers. So many have matters deeply imbedded in their craws, like iron wedges forced between themselves and other Christians. They can’t walk together because they do not agree. When they should be marching side by side through this world taking men captive for Jesus Christ, they are acting instead like an army that has been routed and scattered and whose troops in their confusion have begun fighting among themselves. Nothing is sapping the church of Christ of her strength so much as these unresolved problems, these loose ends among believing Christians that have never been tied up. There is no excuse for this sad condition, for the Bible does not allow for loose ends. God wants no loose ends.
Jay Adams
If she has been given the gift of living as a single person, she must be willing to do so, prepare to do so, and look for the work in Lord’s vineyard that doubtless He has for her. She must not dread the future, looking at it apprehensively, but must recognize that the Lord never calls His children without providing them the help that they need to accomplish His will and the ability to be happy in doing it.
Jay Adams
Love is giving – giving of oneself to another. It is not getting, as the world says today. It is not feeling and desire; it is not something over which one has no control. It is something that we do for another. No one loves in the abstract. Love is an attitude that issues forth in something that actually, tangibly happens.
Jay Adams
The modern view of separation is an anti-biblical substitution for the biblical requirement of reconciliation or (in some cases) divorce. These two options alone are given by God. Modern separation settles nothing; it amounts to a refusal to face issues and set them to rest. The world may have no way of solving problems – and so opts for an uneasy cease-fire – but the church does, if she will only avail herself of the biblical means.
Jay Adams
Today, one of the greatest threats to evangelical preaching comes from the invasion of the church by Adler-Maslow, etc., self-image, self-worth dogmas. Passage after passage in the Bible has been distorted in order to conform to these teachings, with the result that you end up preaching man and his supposed worth rather than Christ. Sometimes that “worth” has been seen as intrinsic, sometimes it has been considered to be the result of salvation.
Jay Adams
The purpose of reading, explaining and applying a portion of Scripture is to obey the command to “preach the Word.” In no other way may we expect to experience the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our preaching. He did not spend thousands of years producing the Old and New Testaments…only to ignore it! What He “moved” men to write He now motivates us to preach. He has not promised to bless our word; that promise extends only to His own (Isa. 55:10, 11).
Jay Adams
Sources: liberty.edu, cryingoutforjustice.blog, psmag.com, awkwardspinster.com
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