Saturday, December 12, 2020

James 5:13-18 Another Look at Prayer and Healing

Healing in the Bible is a big subject.  I wrote a book on it; it took 356 pages and 64 chapters.  It’s also controversial.  That doesn’t mean that you avoid the subject.  It means that you need to work harder on it, so you are sure that you have the right answer.  Who knows?  Maybe someday it will save your life.  I think it saved mine.  Probably at least three times. 

I discussed this passage in my book, but reading this passage in James again, it looks like I could write another chapter.  It’s an important passage and worth a closer look.

James 5:13–18 (The translation is mine.  There are some places where translations can be different.  If you have a question about one, let me know and I will explain why I did what I did.)

13 Is anyone suffering among you?  Let him pray.

The word suffering here is a general word.  It can cover anything from a really bad day to a major illness.

Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing praises.

The words ‘sing praises’ is the verb form of the noun for psalms, which was the Hebrew hymnbook.  Some might argue that it may simply mean ‘sing’ or even play an instrument, though not everyone can do that.  But it would seem strange that James would encourage people to just sing anything. 

14 Is anyone sick among you?

The word literally means to be weak and means that in probably most times it occurs in the Bible, including the Greek Old Testament.  Like Samson becoming weak like other men.

But it is also the word used most commonly for being sick. 

He’s going to tell you in a second to call for the elders of the church if this applies to you, and the Lord will raise you up.  So this is a lot more than just being or feeling weak.  You wouldn’t call for the elders of the church if you just felt weak.

Some Bible scholars argue that this is not a physical sickness but an emotional one.  They seem to want to avoid the miracle of physical healing, but from what I’ve seen of people with emotional problems, they are harder to fix than physical ones, so that would be a greater miracle if they were restored. 

Then let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;

I know elders do this when they are asked.  I just don’t think they are asked very often.  Maybe most people haven’t been taught to do this, or they don’t expect it to make any difference.   I don’t know.  It’s a question worth asking.

15 and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up,

The expression is literally ‘the prayer of faith,’ not the prayer offered in faith, and people may argue what that means, but James already explained it in chapter one.

James 1:6–8   6 But let him ask in faith doubting nothing,

James had mentioned just prior to this about asking God for wisdom.  He said God is very willing to give it, but you can’t doubt that He will, otherwise . . . .

for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, 8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

otherwise, he shouldn’t suppose that he will get anything from God. 

Christians seem afraid that they are presuming on God when they expect to get the thing they prayed for.  Well, God expects you to believe that you will get wisdom if you ask for it.  And it seems the same for healing.  I know some people will say that they tried it, and it didn’t work, or they know somebody else who tried it and it didn’t work.  I’ll talk about that a little later.

and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

There seems to be a connection of some sort with people having done things they shouldn’t have or not doing things they should have and not dealing with that.  It seems that unresolved sins can play a role in a person’s sickness and recovery, though not necessarily.

16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed.

This passage can probably be understood in two ways: confessing your sins to one another and praying for each other can have a healing effect on you, or that healing is what they pray for.  I would say that James is saying that they should pray for healing, because the very next verse tells us how powerful prayer can be.

Again, some will argue that the healing here is emotional, not physical, but, again, I think that would be a far greater miracle than a physical one.  But he wants Christians to be open to other believers about their shortcomings and failures, and they should pray for each other for their healing, whatever kind it is.  James wouldn’t have told them to pray for it, if he didn’t expect it to happen.

And then James tells us how powerful prayer can be.

16 The effective prayer of a righteous man is very powerful.  17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

Elijah’s ‘prayer’ is found in I Kings 17:1.   Now Elijah the Tishbite . . . said to Ahab, “As the LORD God of Israel lives before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

Elijah didn’t ask God to stop the rain.  He just declared it.  I know, people will say that he prayed before this, and he was just telling King Ahab what God told him.  I really think that if that is how it happened, then it would have said so. 

But even so.  The point is that Elijah was a man just like us, and if he could pray that it wouldn’t rain for 3 ½ years, we could and should pray for another believer to be healed. 

I see no other conclusion.

A few remarks before we finish:

1)      Things often don’t happen as fast as we would like or expect.  I had cancer twice.  The first time I never got treated, so I can’t tell you how fast anything changed.  The second time I got to stage 4 before it went to 0.  The doctor was a little concerned, but I never thought that I was going to die from this.

2)      John Wimber, a famous pastor with a noted healing ministry, wrote that he taught on healing for 6 months in his church, and nothing happened.  Then it started and never stopped. 

3)      Many of us have known people who have died or who have had chronic conditions that we thought should have been healed.  And we don’t know why.  All I can say is that there are a lot of things that we don’t know and never will.  And you will never know another person well enough to know why something happened in their life or not.  Our responsibility is to study the Bible, pray as much as possible, and live your life open before God and doing the things you believe the Bible tells you.

 

 

 

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