James 5:14-15 – Praying For The Sick

Sermon & Translation by Nate Wilson Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 16 July 2023

Introduction

• Read my translation, starting at v. 14
  Is anyone among y’all sick? Let him call to himself the elders of the church, and let them pray over him after anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the vow-prayer of faith will restore the one who is ailing, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he happens to have committed sins, it will be forgiven him. Therefore, keep confessing your sins to one another and keep praying on behalf of one another, so that y’all might be healed. The plea of a righteous man has much strength when it is implemented.

• At the close of my last sermon, I approached v.14 in the context of the previous verse, noting that we are to pray at all times, both when we’re suffering and when we’re feeling good (as v.13 points out), and also (as v. 14 points out) when we are too weak to pray for ourselves. We can recruit others to pray for us! I believe that is how v.14 relates back to v.13.

• But v. 14 also relates forward to verses 15-20, shifting from what we do for ourselves spiritually to what we can do to rescue others who are messed up by sin. At this time, I want to focus in on prayer for the sick that is commanded in verses 14-16.

v. 14 The Commands To Pray For The Sick

• The Greek word for “sick” literally means “without strength,” so it can apply to a broad range of physical and mental and spiritual weaknesses. And this is for anyone in the church (“anyone among y’all,” as James put it). If you are weak or sick and need help to make it through a trial, you are commanded to call the elders of the church to come to you and pray for you, and the elders are commanded to go to you and anoint you with oil and pray for you.

  • Biblically-speaking, the elders are the leaders (Heb. 13:17) of the local church. Acts 14:23 tells us that the church-planting strategy of the Apostles was: “...they appointed elders/presbyters in every church” and then prayed over them and entrusted the leader­ship to them and moved on to plant the next church. In other parts of the New Testament, they are called “pastors” (Eph. 4:11) or “overseers/bishops” (1 Tim. 3:1ff). Do you have the kind of relationship with the elders of our church that you could ask them to pray for you? The Bible says it is normal for them to be involved in your life.

  • But let’s also not read more into this passage than it actually says. This is not a command to avoid medical doctors.

    • Keep in mind that James is an apostle speaking to the church about the things of the church; we wouldn’t expect an apostle to comment on the medical sciences.

    • Physicians are experts in medicine, so we expect medical doctors to administer medicine and physical procedures,

    • but, according to Acts 6:4, church leaders should be experts in prayer and Bible teaching, so, naturally that’s what the elders of the church are to do with the sick: pray and minister the Word!

  • I might also mention as we get oriented to this passage that Roman Catholics have based their rite of extreme unction on this verse, but that rite is a perversion of what James actually says¹ - extreme unction is about purifying somebody right before they die, not about healing the sick; we don’t accept the practice of extreme unction.

  • But in the hoopla over elders and doctors and Protestants and Catholics, don’t miss the point of this passage. If you’re sick, you should ask the elders of the church to come to you and pray for you! That’s a command from God’s word. If you don’t ask the elders to come and pray for you, you will miss out.

• In addition to prayer, the elders are to anoint this person with oil. No explanation is given in the Bible as to why, so that has resulted in a variety of opinions among Christians about it.

  • The only other mention of anointing with oil in connection with healing is in Mark 6:12-13, when Jesus sent the 12 disciples out on their first ministry tours through Israel, “So they went out and preached that people should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick², and healed them.” (NKJV)

  • Some scholars have suggested that the oil is representative of the Holy Spirit, thus, an­ointing with oil was symbolic of God bringing supernatural healing to the anointed person.

    • For that reason, in the mid 1500’s, John Calvin refused to anoint his parishioners with oil because he believed that ministry passed away with the apostles,

    • and Matthew Henry commented around the year 1700 that “expositors” of his day still held that view³, although “some [including himself] thought that it should not be wholly laid aside.”

  • Others in more recent years have suggested the opposite: that James’ instruction to anoint the sick with oil was a direction to use natural medicine instead of seeking a supernatural cure⁴. Oils are indeed used in a lot of medicinal treatments.

  • There are Christians on various sides of this debate in our own congregation, but my opinion is that,

    • because this Greek word for “anointing” with oil is used almost-exclusively in the Bible to describe preparing for a social event⁵, rather than for health or for religious reasons,

    • and because the only other instance in the Bible of anointing the sick with oil was in the context of the supernatural healing ministry of the apostles (Mark 6:13),

    • and because this anointing with oil, according to James, was to be done “in the name of the Lord,”

    • I think that the oil may simply represent good health restored by the power of God.

• A related controversy is whether or not Christians should expect supernatural healing to occur today.

  • Here is an area where we need to tread carefully, because there are many charlatans who, although they have never actually healed anybody, have claimed to exercise a gift of supernatural healing, and have bilked hurting people out of money and abused them. We don’t want to support that kind of chicanery.

  • There is a devout stream of theologians, whom I respect, that maintain that all miracles ceased when the apostles died. The key passage I have heard in support of the cessation position is in 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 “Love never falls down, even if prophecies will be put out of commission, even if languages will cease, even if knowledge will be put out of commission. For we have knowledge of a part and we prophecy of a part, but whenever the completion comes, that which is of a part will be put out of commission. When I used to be a baby, I used to make utterances like a baby, I used to think like a baby, I used to reason like a baby. When I had become a man, I had put out of commission the things of the child. For we see now by means of a mirror in riddles, but then face to face. Now I know of a part, but then I will fully know just as I was known.”

  • But with all due respect to those who hold the cessation position,

    • I find it hard to believe that God would give so many instructions in the New Testament to govern miracle-related gifts if God intended to put them all out of commission just a few years later.

    • I also believe that there is room for interpreting the passages which speak of the ces­sation of spiritual gifts and miracles, as happening, not at the time of the apostles’ deaths around AD 70, but rather at Christ’s eschatological return in the future.

    • And, as I have read the biographies of Christians throughout history – even biograph­ies of Reformers, and as I have personally observed the church for over half a cent­ury, I have read-of and witnessed enough miracles that I am open to their continua­tion, although it seems to me that God generally reserves such things for extraord­inary circumstances, primarily for the frontiers of foreign mission work, where the Bible and the church are less available.

    • You don’t have to agree with me on that to be a Christian, though.

  • Coming back to James 5, God has not given us any new revelation to tell elders no longer to pray for and anoint the sick, so I believe our marching orders from James have not changed, and we are to pray and anoint with oil, whether or not anybody gets supernaturally healed.

    • And, not all who were sick in the Bible were healed. For instance, God did not heal the Apostle Paul of his “thorn in the flesh” even though Paul prayed three times for God to remove it! (2 Cor. 12:8)⁶, and Jesus did not heal every person in the nation who was sick (Matt. 13:58). So it would not be consistent with what Scripture reveals for us to expect everyone we pray for to be healed. Nevertheless, I have seen some miraculous healings occur after concerted elder prayer.

    • One of my childhood friends had a hydrocephalic condition. I remember noticing, Sunday after Sunday, his head ballooning larger and larger – it was pretty alarming to see that giant head on that tiny body! Doctors tried inserting shunts to drain the cerebral fluid, but that didn’t help. Finally my friend’s family called the elders of the church to pray over him. My Dad was one of those elders. And without further treatment, the problem went away! I didn’t know any of the doctors treating him, so I don’t know their perspective, but my family and friends believe that was a miracle.

    • In our own church, we had a young child diagnosed with an inguinal hernia and scheduled for surgery at a local hospital. The Sunday before going in to surgery, the parents asked the elders of our church to pray for the child. They even showed us the grotesque bump in their child’s abdomen. We prayed and anointed that child with oil and didn’t really think much more of it; I don’t think any of us elders were really expecting a supernatural healing that time. But the parents reported a week or so later that, when they showed up for the hernia surgery, the doctor couldn’t find any hernia, so he canceled the surgery! I think, in that case, God blessed the faith and obedience of those church members with a miraculous healing!

    • Now, we have to realize that this isn’t magic that we control with our prayers. Our God is a person, so He does whatever He wants, and healing is not always what He wants.

    • Also, the fact that this anointing ministry is put into the hands of the church elders protects it to some extent from being done by indiscriminate folks when it might not be appropriate (Calvin),

    • but to be honest, the number of persons in our church NOT miraculously healed after our elders prayed for them is greater than the number who were miraculously healed.

    • Nevertheless, you are still commanded to call the elders to you when you are sick, whether or not you are miraculously healed as a result. You will still be blessed, no matter what, even if that blessing is nothing more than the attention and prayers of your church elders, and the encouragement you receive from them to trust God. So, don’t miss out on the blessing of following God’s word!

• This command from James is consistent with other New Testament scriptures which exhort us to care for the sick:

  • In Jesus’ “Parable of the Sheep and The Goats,” one of the things which characterized the people saved by Jesus⁷, was that they visited the sick,

  • and the Apostles wrote to the entire church in Thessalonica: “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak [this is the same word translated “sick” here in James], be patient with all.” (1 Th. 5:14, NKJV)

v.15 Promises For Those Who Pray For The Sick

• Verse 15 introduces a new word for “prayer” in relation to the sick, which only occurs in two other places in the New Testament (Acts 18:18 and Acts 21:23), and in both of those other passages, English Bibles all translate this word as “vow” (and it involves a haircut). I suspect modern translators had a hard time seeing how a vow and a haircut would fit the context of this passage about praying for the sick here in James,

  • but some of the earliest references in the Greek Bible give perspective that makes sense of this unique word for prayer:

    • Genesis 28:20-22 “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, ‘If the Lord God will be with me, and guard me throughout on this journey, on which I am going, and give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, and bring me back in safety to the house of my father, then shall the Lord be for a God to me. And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be to me a house of God; and of all whatsoever thou shalt give me, I will tithe a tenth for thee.’” You see, Jacob is lonely and in danger, but when the Lord reveals Himself to him, Jacob promises that if this God will keep him safe on the way to Haran and back home, then he will make this God his God and will build a temple for the Lord at Bethel and will donate a tenth of his assets to the worship of this God. That’s the first example of this kind of prayer. The next is in...

    • Num. 21:2 “And Israel vowed a vow to the Lord, and said, If thou wilt deliver this people into my power, I will devote it and its cities to thee.” (Brenton) Here we have Israel experiencing a military threat from the Aradite nation, and the prayer-vow is made that if God will give Israel the ability to conquer the Aradites, Israel will donate that land and its cities to the worship of God. A similar thing happens in...

    • Judges 11:30-31 “And Jephthae vowed a vow to the Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall come to pass that whosoever shall first come out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, he shall be the Lord's: I will offer him up for a whole-burnt-offering.” (Brenton)

    • 2 Samuel 15:7-8 “...Abessalom said to his father, I will go now, and pay my vows, which I vowed to the Lord in Chebron. For thy servant vowed a vow when I dwelt at Gedsur in Syria, saying, If the Lord should indeed restore me to Jerusalem, then will I serve the Lord.” (Brenton) It was a promise made to God, basically, “If You will save me, I will worship You.”

  • This is also the word used in the Greek Old Testament to describe the Nazirite vow.

    • Numbers 6:2ff “...Whatsoever man or woman shall specially vow a vow to separate oneself [to be a Nazirite] with purity to the Lord, he shall purely abstain from wine and strong drink... all the days of his vow: he shall eat no one of all the things that come from the vine... all the days of his separation:--a razor shall not come upon his head, until the days be fulfilled which he vowed to the Lord: he shall be holy…” (Brenton)

    • This Nazarite vow was what Hannah promised to do in 1 Samuel 1 if God would give her a son, and it was also the basis of the two other instances of this word in the New Testament, when Paul took temporary Nazarite vows, then, had his hair cut, first in Cenchrea in Acts 18:18, then in Jerusalem in Acts 21:23.

  • So with that context, the picture James paints is that of a promise you make to God that if He heals you, you will do a certain thing for God.

    • This probably will make most Protestants nervous, because it sounds like trying to manipulate God and earn His mercies, but it can be a legitimate thing if done with an attitude of repentance for failing to do something you know God wanted you to do, especially if there is reason to believe that God is disciplining you through sickness for your failure to obey Him in order to get you to repent and obey Him.

    • In a case like that, it might be entirely appropriate to pray, “O God, if You will heal me, I will do that thing I know You wanted me to do but which I haven’t been doing.”

    • That’s one reason why James calls it “the vow-prayer of faith.” Simply making promises to God in order to get what you want is not what this is about. It is only appropriate if done in a true spirit of “faith” in God.

• John Gill wrote in his commentary on this passage: “God sometimes lays his afflicting hand upon His people, when they have been negligent of their duty, and He has not heard of them for some time, in order to bring them near to Him, to seek His face... and pour out a prayer before Him.”

• But sickness isn’t always a disciplinary measure from God. You might not be sick because of any sin committed.

  • Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James used the word “if” in the clause: “if he has committed any sins,” because it may or may not be the case that there is something for the sick person to repent of.

  • When Jesus’ disciples asked Him whether a certain man was blind because of his sin, “Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.’” (John 9:3, NKJV) In other words, “It wasn’t because of any particular sin that this man was born blind, rather it was in order to give me an opportunity to heal him and display the glory of God that this man was born blind!”

  • So, if the Holy Spirit does not bring to mind any particular sin you need to confess, and you honestly can’t think of anything wrong you did, it’s o.k. Your sickness is probably for some other reason, perhaps merely to give God an opportunity to show off His power to heal you of sickness or to sustain you through sickness!

  • But if some sin does come to mind to confess, by all means pursue God’s forgiveness together with your church elders!

• Verse 15 also lists results to expect after prayer: the one who is ailing will literally be “saved” (The word translated “save/make well” in v.15 is the same Greek word translated “save” in v.20 regarding sinners.), and “the Lord will raise him up, and if he happens to have committed sins, it will be forgiven him.” In this case, I suspect that the salvation/restoration/healing of the sick/infirm person is described by the latter two things on the list, both a physical recovery of the “Lord raising up” the person, as well as a spiritual forgiveness of sins, which is at the heart of the Gospel.

  • James indicates here that the three concepts of “faith,” of “healing,” and of “salvation” are somehow all related. But this is another area where some Christians have run roughshod over what the Bible actually says. The Bible teaches there is some relationship between faith and healing, but it’s not a mechanical or magical relationship. The “Word of Faith” movement is a heresy which teaches that whatever you say, if you have enough faith, it will come true, but that is not the way God’s Word presents the relationship of faith and healing.

  • The same Greek words for “faith” and “save” show up 11 other times in the Bible; let’s see how they are related in the rest of Scripture:

    • Matthew 9:22 “And Jesus, once He had turned around and looked at her [the woman with the issue of blood], said, ‘Keep on being courageous, daughter, your faith has saved you.’ And the woman was saved from that hour on.” (NAW || Mk. 5:34 || Lk. 8:48)

    • Mark 10:52 “Then Jesus said to him [blind Bartimaeus in Jericho], ‘Go your way; your faith has saved You.’ And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.” (NKJV || Luke 18:42)

    • Luke 7:50 “Then He said to the [sinful] woman [who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume], ‘Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.’” (NAW)

    • To the Samaritan Leper who came back to thank Jesus for healing him, Jesus said, “Get up, get going. It was faith that saved you!” (Luke 17:19b, NAW)

    • Acts 14:8-10 “And in Lystra a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never walked. This man heard Paul speaking. Paul, observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed [lit. ‘saved’], said with a loud voice, ‘Stand up straight on your feet!’ And he leaped and walked.” (NKJV)

    • 1 Timothy 2:15 “Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.” (NKJV)

  • Spiritual salvation through faith in Jesus and physical salvation from a debilitating phys­ical condition blend together in these accounts, just as it does in James 5, with prayer bringing both salvation from sickness and forgiveness of sin.

    • This was because Jesus intended to demonstrate His power to save spiritually through His visible power to save physically. Jesus made that clear when He forgave the sins of the paralytic lowered through the roof in Capernaum, “‘But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins’ - He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.’” (Mark 2:10-11, NKJV)

    • God’s salvation is holistic, both physical and spiritual, as Psalm 103 points out: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities [spiritual], Who heals all your diseases [physical], Who redeems your life from destruc­tion, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies…” (Ps. 103:2-4, NKJV)

    • For this reason, I think that this process of prayer and anointing by the elders should be reserved primarily for situations where we suspect that sin is part of the reason for our sickness.

  • But in case anyone might dare to say that it was anyone’s own effort of faith that healed them, the next passage that mentions both “faith” and “saved” in Ephesians 2:8-9 puts that heresy to rest:

    • “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.” (NKJV)

    • That’s why James says in the end that it is the “Lord” who will “raise them up” out of their sickness – not the prayer, not the elders, but the Lord.

  • Finally, the last verse in the Bible about faith and salvation is James 2:14 “What would be the benefit, my brothers, if someone were claiming to have faith, while not having works? His faith would not be able to save him, would it?” (NAW)

    • The bare exercise of faith is not what brings God’s holistic salvation. If you are not healed after prayer, it is not a mere matter of trusting God more perfectly and exercising more faith in order to get what you want. (One of my family members used to attend a church that taught that, and they tell of how that destroyed a family’s faith because they felt they had to exercise more and more extreme measures of faith in order to get their son healed. Before long, the child died, so the family felt like the right thing to do was to dig his body out of the cemetery in order to prove their faith in healing. But it didn’t work.) The Lord’s salvation and healing are His decision; they are not controlled by our faith.

    • On the other hand, there is no salvation without faith that trusts in the Lord Jesus to save. In other words, those who are saved by the Lord (because the Lord wills it), are also those who trust Jesus to save them, which is why James says in chapter 1 verse 6, “But he must ask in faith, without doubting...” (NAW) “Without doubting” doesn’t mean that you have so much faith in “having faith” that you don’t doubt that the exercise of your faith will bring an answer to prayer – that is the wrong object of faith. That’s basically trusting yourself to save yourself. Christian faith is in Jesus, so “not doubting” means that we have no doubts about Him – He can save, He will do what is right, and He can do whatever He wants, and that’s why we’re coming to Him in prayer, and therefore we leave the results up to Him.

• But because Jesus has the power to save and because He gives us faith and because He invites us to pray for people to be healed and saved, prayer can yield some powerful results in saving folks. I plan to look at that more in depth in the next sermon, but for now...

CONCLUSION

• If you are weak or sick and need help to make it through a trial, especially if you think that your sin is an important part of the equation, obey God’s Word and call the elders of the church to come to you. The elders are commanded to go to you and anoint you with oil and pray for you.

• If you are suffering some kind of infirmity,

  • Ask God to bring to mind any sin that He is trying to get you to deal with, and if any­thing comes to mind, confess it and turn away from it so that you may find healing.

  • If you realize that God has called you to do something which you have been avoiding, consider making a prayer-vow-like promise to God to do what you have been failing to do, as part of your restoration. (And be sure to make good on your promise to God!)

  • But if no sin comes to mind after an honest assessment of yourself, simply wait on the Lord for His response to the prayers for your healing.

• Place your trust in Jesus, not in your own efforts.

• Pursue appropriate physical means of healing. James doesn’t comment on this (unless he intends that by mentioning anointing with oil), but we are free to call for those with skill in physical healing in addition to calling for the elders of the church to pursue the spiritual angles of healing.

• Approach prayer as a personal relationship with a personal God who makes His own decis­ions, not like a magical tool to manipulate divine power to do what you want, and stand prepared to accept God’s will,

  • whether He chooses to demonstrate His power by healing you,

  • or whether He chooses to demonstrate His power by not healing you but sustaining you through enduring affliction!

• Pursue healing which deals not only with your physical needs but also with your spiritual needs: “The great thing therefore we should beg of God for ourselves and others in the time of sickness is the pardon of sin... When you are sick and in pain, it is most common to pray and cry, ‘O give me ease! O restore me to health!’ But your prayer should rather and chiefly be, O that God would pardon my sins! … If sin be pardoned, either affliction shall be removed in mercy or we shall see there is mercy in the continuance of it…” ~Matthew Henry

James 5:14-16 – Comparison Of Textual Traditions & Versions^A