James 5:13-18

¹³ Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. ¹⁴ Is any sick among you? 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: ¹⁵ And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. ¹⁶ Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. ¹⁷ Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. ¹⁸ And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

Perhaps you have heard that James, the brother of Jesus and author of this letter, used to be referred to as “Old Camel Knees.” He got that nickname because it was said that he spent an extraordinary amount of time in prayer. It is perhaps because he learned what D. L. Moody stated years ago, “We talk about heaven being so far away, It is within speaking distance to those who belong there.” The letter begins with a call for Christians to faithfully endure trials of all kinds (James 1:2-4). He writes to suffering Christians who have been scattered throughout the world because of persecution against the early church. Whatever situation they find themselves in, he calls them to ask God for wisdom (1:5) and to ask for that wisdom with pure motives (1:6-8). The letter begins with prayer. Now, as we are very near the end of the letter, we come to this subject matter again. In this final section, James addresses the power of prayer in the community of the people of God. While this section would certainly apply to and address personal, private prayer, its focus is on corporate prayer in the church. It is about how believers are to pray for one another. In this section on the power of prayer, James gives to us three great principles to know as we consider praying for one another in the body of Christ. This week we will examine the first principle and begin to address the second one before concluding this portion of Scripture next week.

The first principle set forth by James is that there is a great need for praying for one another in the body of Christ. Verses 13-14 lay out three different situations and circumstances that we can find ourselves in in life. “Afflicted” is a word that essentially means “to endure” but it takes on the meaning in its usage here of “to suffer trouble.” James asks, “Are you going through a difficult time?” How is a believer to respond to that? He says, “let him pray.” When troubled and tempted, we have already addressed how we should never blame God (James 1:13-18), get angry (1:19-22), mistreat others (2:1-13; 4:1-3, 11-12), or take matters into our own hands (4:13-5:11). Instead, we are called to approach God for wisdom (1:5). We are to do so with the sincere desire to be pleasing to Him and honor Him (1:6-8). This requires a recognition that afflictions (trials) are an essential part of His plan to mold us into the image of His Son and therefore are for our good (Romans 8:28-29; Hebrews 12:5-11).

The second question that James asks is “Is any merry?” The word simply means “to be cheerful.” The response is “let him sing psalms” which translates “let him sing praises.” Praise is actually a type of prayer. When we sing for God’s glory, we should really be singing songs to Him and for Him as a means of praising Him for who He is and what He has done. Praise is actually also a form of proclaiming because when believers sing corporate praises, we are singing to one another about God. There are two types of prayers described here. First, is the prayer for help in trial. Second, is praise for blessing from God. Putting the two together, Warren Wiersbe wrote, “The mature Christian knows how to sing while he is suffering.” That is because the mature Christian knows that the suffering of life has a good purpose. Job 35:10 declares that God “giveth songs in the night.” Praises are the fruit of a spirit-filled life (Ephesians 5:18-19) and a life enriched by God’s Word because it is in those truths that true joy is found (Colossians 3:16).

The last situation that James addresses are those that find themselves “sick.” They are told to “call for the elders” (pastors) to pray over them. This text is the cause of much debate and variety of interpretive meanings. However, the context of James, the immediate context of this passage, and the rest of the teaching of the Bible, as well as the meanings of the words and verbs used, seems to point in a certain direction. While it is not wrong for Christians to pray for the physically ill, that does not seem to be the focus here. Instead, the word “sick” can be translated as “weary,” “tired,” “doubting,” “timid,” “hesitant,” “unsettled,” or “distressed.” Since the context of the letter is how Christians are to live facing trials of all kinds, it seems that this is the point James makes here. If any of us are weak or struggling with temptation or a difficult situation, the answer is to go to other believers and ask them to pray for us. Specifically, he mentions “elders,” or pastors, here. The reason is that they serve as the representative leadership of the church. What about the command, “anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord?” The answer is first found in that the word “anointing” is not an imperative verb, it’s not a command for us to take an action. Rather, the form is an aorist active verb, meaning it’s describing the previous action of the elders praying. It is not a command to pour oil on people for physical healing. It is a command for the church to pray for one another. In other words, the act of the elders praying over the individual is like anointing them with oil. This makes more sense when we find that oil was used as a symbol of the Holy Spirit in Scripture (Matthew 25:1-13) and that it was used for medicinal and anointing purposes in Judaism and the ancient world. Here, James says that the act of the church praying for one another when we need help is invoking the Holy Spirit’s involvement in the situation (praying for wisdom in James 1:5), it has an effect like medicine on the troubled heart of the believer, and it prepares them by setting them apart (anointing them) for God’s purposes to face their trial in such a way that honors God. We need prayer. We need to pray for one another.

The second principle he lays out for us builds on the first and it is that there is great love demonstrated when God’s people pray for one another. William Law rightly said, “There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as prayer for him.” This is why Jesus told us “pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” The way to avoid bitterness toward those who’ve hurt us and to love those that are hard to love is that we are called to pray for them. James demonstrates the great love in praying for, not our enemies here, but our brothers. The promised answer to the prayers of the elders in verse 14, is found in verse 15 and that is that the prayer will “save the sick” and “the Lord shall raise him up.” The one that is distressed, defeated, and struggling will be lifted up by God through the prayers of God’s people. The word “sick” means “weary” as it’s used in Hebrews 12:3 that calls believers to endure trials as Jesus endured the cross and says, “For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” The phrase “prayer of faith” is important because it describes a prayer of confidence, not an inner compulsion to believe something or claim something arbitrarily just because we want it really bad. It’s a prayer of confidence in what God’s Word has promised. People can pray for all kinds of things and believe with all their innermost being that it will come true, but that may not be God’s will. The only way to know God’s will is from what He’s told us in His Word. The prayer of faith is the prayer based on God’s Word. 1 John 5:14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” What is all of this really about here? The contextual key is found at the end of verse 15, “and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” It is followed in verse 16 by a call to confess sins to one another. The sins in mind are most likely the sins described in the letter that resulted from the different life circumstances the believers found themselves in. The call here is to call on other believers to help by praying for us in trials and to be restored in any ways we have sinned.

The issue here is about facing trials and all circumstances of life in a way that pleases God. That is often hard and we can feel hopeless and defeated because we are weak. However, God has made an awesome provision in the body of Christ. He has given us one another to pray for one another so that we do not have to do this alone.