JAMES - Be Doers of the Word, and not Hearers Only
Studies in the Letter of James (by Dr. Richard Thomas)
Chapter V
Prayer and Faith (James 5:13-20)
JAMES 5:13-20
13 Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praises. 14 Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, 15 and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18 He prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit. 19 Brothers, if any among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Here is one of the great passages on prayer in the NT. The noun and verb, ‘prayer’ and ‘pray’ occur 7 times in 7 verses. Notice the three ‘is any’, covering emotional states other than lethargy, ‘Is any in trouble’, ‘Is any happy’, ‘Is any sick’. In the third case the advice is to call the elders and let them pray. In the first and second Bengel writes we could reverse the order and say ‘If sad praise’, ‘If happy pray’, but Scripture is wiser than that, and gives us what the mind can endure and tackle. Cheerful folk would praise. Sufferers are driven to pray.
Prayer is next linked to healing, confessing and soul-winning. As an elder himself James was often on call for such a ministry. Two points need to be stressed here: Disease should not be accepted fatalistically – The Bible says, “Do something about it! Start with prayer!” (John 9:1,2).
Furthermore, cast every kind of care on God (bodily diseases, misfortunes and the like). Healing was operative not only in the Apostolic Age, Augustine recorded a list of contemporary miracles; Bengel and Alexis Carel also bore witness to such healing in more recent times. Using oil has a modern twist, use medicine and pray that such means may be effective. The key is ‘in the name of the Lord’. If the sickness is the result of specific sin, repentance and pardon should come first.
There is positive confession, or witness to Christ as set out in Romans 10:9. Confess his name to others. Confession of sin clears the air, mends our relationships. It lays out one’s anxieties before a caring friend, as wisdom and sympathy are invaluable. Children should confess to their parents. Elders are the proper persons to turn to if the sinner is on a sick bed. All should confess to God. Plain talk about sin is embarrassing. So this ministry ought not to be ignored but it is not for those:
- Who cannot keep confidences
- Who pooh pooh sin (say it does not matter)
- Who are harsh in their judgments
F.F. Bruce gives some useful guidelines.
| a) | Sin committed against God | - | to be confessed only to God |
| b) | Sin committed against an individual | - | to be confessed to that one |
| c) | Sin committed against a church | - | to be confessed in church. |
| d) | Sin committed against the general public | - | to be confessed in public |
| e) | Restitution is a vital part of confession. | ||
| f) | Men are better fitted to hear confession of men, women of women. | ||
Elijah is an effectual model of prayer that works – He fled from a woman, complained to God, wallowed in self-pity; he was not flawless. There are some who disbelieve in any but a subjective answer to prayer. Not so Elijah, by praying he fed the hungry, revived an orphan and confounded the godless. Such power is not out of reach today.
Soul-winning: This covers all who err or wander from the truth or the good. If the one who strays is a Christian bring him back to faith and obedience. For unbelievers conversion is the cure from a life of sin to a life in Christ. Can we talk of saving souls? Paul does in 1 Corinthians 9. Calvin expands his “There is nothing more noble … we must not neglect this splendid work. We must beware or souls redeemed by Christ may perish by our carelessness – for their salvation, to some degree, was put into our hands by God”.
“If any man lacks wisdom”: Here more than anywhere else we lack wisdom, in not caring, not knowing how, not loving enough (charity covers a multitude of sins). Soul-winning achieves two objects – it covers a host of sins committed and secures eternal life for the sinner.