In verse 13, James asked a rhetorical question: is anyone suffering? And James asked that question knowing that most of the people in his audience would most likely answer “yes.” He was writing to people who knew the trials and even persecutions of being a follower of Jesus.
And his response to his own question was: “let him prayer.”
This word “pray” in the original Greek is a present tense word suggesting the idea of “keep praying.” And so James is saying, “are you suffering?” then don’t stop praying! Remain in a place of prayer. This is not a one time action. You can’t say, “well, I prayed but nothing happened.” James is calling us to a lifestyle of prayer. To be people of persevering prayer. The kind of prayer that doesn’t give up.
The heart of prayer is that we are declaring our dependence on God. And one of the benefits of trials is that it puts us in a place where we recognize our need for God. Now the reality is we always need God. We are not self-sufficient people although sometimes we think we are. But suffering has a way of reminding us that we are not. Suffering has a way of moving us out of our self-sufficient mindset and allowing us to rightly say, ‘God, I need you.”
Lehman Straus was a respected seminar professor and bible teacher and he said this about prayer and suffering: “There were times when I felt that God sent adversity to draw me closer to Him in prayer. This has been particularly true when I had become lax in my prayer life. We all must admit that affliction has a way of making the heart humble, contrite, and more dependent upon God.”
This is why James can write these strange words in chapter 1: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…” Because he knows that trials have a way of causing us to cry out to God and to say, “God, I need you.”
And so James say, “Are you suffering?” Keep praying! Not simply so that your problem goes away. But pray so that you walk through the suffering trusting in God. So that you walk through the suffering allowing your faith to be matured.
Too often we give up in prayer because the suffering hasn’t gone away. We think that is the point of prayer. God, I have a problem, take away my problem.
But James isn’t simply saying if you are suffering, then pray and God will take away the suffering. But rather the call to prayer here takes us back to chapter 1 to the verse we just mentioned. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”
The wisdom we are asking for through prayer is the ability to walk through this trial, through this suffering in a manner that we continue to trust God. When God allows suffering to enter our life, what God may be producing in you is a persevering faith that remains faithful in the midst of suffering.
That is why James uses the present tense of the form of pray so that we keep praying and keep trusting in the midst of the suffering.
Verse 13b
Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.
James now reminds us that our dependence on God isn’t just when we are suffering or going through hard times. Our need for God is in every season of life. And so he asks the question: are you cheerful? Are you in a season that you are joyful, happy, glad? If so, your response should be the same as in a season of suffering, you should be persistently and actively seeking God.
One of the challenges of seasons of peace or comfort, is that we can have a tendency to believe that we have life under control. We have created, in our own wisdom, in our own strength, this season of comfort and joy. And we begin to live with a sense of self sufficiency. We may not do it arrogantly. But there can be a subtle shift in our heart. A subtle shift in which we don’t believe that we are desperately in need of God.
You see, when we are suffering, we become desperate. God, help me! God, I need you! God, I am going to die if you don’t rescue me.
But when life is calm, we begin to lose that sense that we desperately need God. But the reality is in every season, good or bad, we are people in need of God.
And so James says, “are you cheerful?” If so, give God praise for this season of peace and joy.
What is praise expressing? Gratitude. Thankfulness. It is recognizing that my life comes from you, my life is dependent on you.
One of the best things to develop in life as a Christian is a heart of gratitude toward God. May that be our default mode. May we be people of worship, people of thanksgiving, people of gratitude. And may we be quick to praise.
I imagine we can all think of a Christian who lives their life out of gratitude toward God. In the good and the bad, they are regularly thanking God. And because of that gratitude, they live differently. There is a persevering joy in their life. There is a hope in their life that doesn’t change in the good days and in the bad days.
It doesn’t mean they are always happy. It doesn’t mean they don’t go through times of discouragement. But there is a divine hope and a divine joy that carries them through every season.
On the other hand, I imagine we have also met Christians who are regularly complaining and grumbling, regularly bothered by things. And they do not exude joy. And I believe one of the reasons is that they do not practice the spiritual discipline of gratitude. James is calling us to people of praise. People of gratitude.
When we cultivate a heart of gratitude and worship, not only does it become the pattern of our life, but it becomes what we naturally do in seasons of suffering. Don’t wait for the trial to develop a heart of prayer and gratitude. Start now.
The way we develop the ability to praise God in the storms is by praising him now in the calm. The way we persevere in prayer in the suffering, is when we have developed and cultivated a persevering praying life in the seasons of blessing.
Verse 14
Is anyone among you sick? 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.
In the first two questions (are you suffering? and are you sick?), James respond with an action that we can do individually or personally. If I am suffering, I can pray. If I am cheerful, I can praise.
But now he is instructing us to invite others into our life to do something for us.
In the Jewish culture, the word elder was often used to describe the spiritual leaders within the community. The word “elder” here is not exclusive to the office of elder as we often see in a local church. It is a word that refers to those who are in a role of spiritual leadership in a church community.
And by calling for the spiritual leaders, James is acknowledging that this sickness the person is experiencing very well may be a spiritual issue that needs to be addressed in a spiritual way.
And James adds an intriguing statement to how the Elders should pray: “anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Now there is great debate about what the anointing of oil means. There are many views about what this oil of anointing with oil means.
The challenge with the phrase is that we have do not have much context for it in Scripture. The only time we see anointing of oil related to sickness is in Mark 6 where the disciples of Jesus “were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them” (Mark 6:13).
And so as we seek to understand what this means, let me first state what this phrase does not mean. The anointing of oil is not the catholic church doctrine of extreme unction that teaches that priests are to anoint people with oil in order to give the sick or the dying a special grace or forgiveness of sin. In fact, James is not teaching that this act is adding anything to one’s salvation or sanctification.
There is also the view that the anointing of oil was providing medicine to the sick person. The Jewish culture used olive oil for a variety of reasons. Some even drank olive oil for health purpose. But most likely James wasn’t instructing them to provide medical treatments.
So what does the anointing of oil mean. Well, as we answer that question, it is helpful to understand how oil was often used in Scripture.
In the Old Testament, when the priest or Kings were commissioned into their roles they were often anointed with oil.
1 Samuel 10:1 says, “Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his inheritance?
Psalm 89:20 says, “I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him…”
The anointed of oil was a setting apart for the purposes of God. So why would oil be used when offering a prayer of healing?
I appreciate Samuel Amadi’s words who expressed it this way: “Anointing with oil is a physical act expressing a spiritual truth: we belong to God and have committed ourselves wholly into his care. Prayer expresses this point with words; anointing with oil expresses that point in action.”
I do believe that is the appropriate way to view the act of anointing someone with oil. Does this mean anytime we pray for someone’s healing we anoint them with oil? No. But there may be times we feel it is appropriate (we feel led in the moment) to use oil as an outward action symbolizing or representing that we are entrusting ourselves to God and his care.
When we invite other into our life to prayer over us, not only are trusting ourselves to his care. But we should also be willing to examine ourselves before others to see if there is sin that needs to be confessed.
Why is James including the confession of sin with praying for one who is sick. Sometimes there is a connection between our spiritual sin and our physical health. 1 Corinthians 11:30, Paul makes a reference to disobedience to physical sickness even death. In John 5, Jesus tells a man he just healed, “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
These statements from Paul and Jesus can make us uncomfortable. But they should at least cause us to recognize that sometimes personal sickness is the result of personal sin. Now I would imagine most of the time sickness is simply the cause of living in a fallen world. But seasons of sickness should at least give us an opportunity to examine our hearts and say, “is there sin that I need to confess.”
I was with a man not too long ago who had been recently diagnosed with cancer and his question to me was, “could this cancer be the result of sin.” And he said he was thinking about this passage.
How would you respond if someone asked you that question? How do you answer that? It is a question that makes us want to quickly respond, “No! Don’t blame yourself.” Sickness and death come to the righteous and the unrighteous, the faithful and the faithless. It is the reality of living in a fallen world. And yet Scripture does indicate there are times sin and sickness are connected.
I told the man that is not a question I can answer for him but use this opportunity to bring yourself before God in humility and pray David’s bold prayer in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
David tells us in Psalm 32 that unconfessed sin does impact us. It impacts us not only spiritually but emotionally and even physically. David wrote, “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away…”
Have you ever experienced the guilt of sin and it was just weighing on you. It was eating you up inside. I think this is why James say, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
The healing James is speaking of here is both a spiritual healing and a physical healing. The confess and repentance of sin brings us back into a right relationship with God and back into restored relationship with the one we have sinned against (if the sin is against another person).
But for James, the main point in this passage is the not oil, or even the confession of sin but the act of prayer. Which leads us to an even more challenging statement from James.
Verse 15
And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
What is James saying here. Is he making a promise that if elders pray in faith the one they are praying over will be healed? This is a verse that has created a lot of debate and also a lot of bad theology.
This is a verse that has led people to say that if one prays in faith for one who is sick then the one who is sick will be healed. The problem with this is that there have been many prayers of faith for those who are sick and the sick person did not recover from the sickness. Or the sick person even died.
Even the apostle Paul was not able to see everyone healed. In 2 Timothy 4:20 he writes, “I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus.” I imagined Paul prayed for Trophimus and he was still sick. Paul doesn’t seem to be addressing his lack of faith but that is friend is simply sick.
Our spiritual maturity doesn’t exempt us from sickness or death. The godly and the faithful get sick. And the godly and faithful have died from those sicknesses.
So what is James saying?
I believe the point is there is power is prayer. I think the point is what James makes in verse 16, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” James is not making the point that every prayer is answered in the manner that we want it answers. James is not making the point that everyone we pray for is healed.
But rather the point is, invite the spiritual leaders in your life to pray over you. Because in God’s great design, he allows us through prayer to be a part of what he is doing. The prayers of faithful people, righteousness people make a difference.