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James 5:14-16  Is anyone among you sick?  Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.  If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

In the 17 years I have been writing TQW this is now the sixth time I have been faced with choosing a verse to comment on from James Chapter 5.  I have always managed to avoid today’s three verses because of the ‘problem’ they present to us!  This time I’ve decided to ‘bite the bullet’!

They are an integral and important part of the Holy Spirit inspired Word of God and are therefore “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16) – so, bear with me – here we go.

Many years ago a fairly young colleague in ministry was diagnosed with cancer.  His wife and teenage children, and his congregation, were clearly highly dependant on him.  On the basis of today’s verses he asked a group of us, ministers and elders, to meet around him with some oil and do what James instructed.  (Picture, if you can, a room full of devout, committed Presbyterians confessing their sins to each other – but we did!).  In the enigmatic providence of God this man died shortly afterwards.

Did this stop me from subsequently praying earnestly and trustingly for people with similar diagnoses, including more recently my own dear late wife who for 60 years had been such a necessary part of everything I ever did?  No!  Will these instances of God’s providence stop me from praying in future?  No!  I note that immediately preceding these words in Chapter 5 James had used the example of Job’s perseverance in the face of God’s strange, inexplicable – especially to his four ‘friends’ – providence.

A well-known ‘prayer warrior’ was asked in an interview the leading question: “Do you believe in the power of prayer?” to which he answered, “No, I don’t.  I believe in the power of God, therefore I pray.”  I also find the answers to Questions 26-28 of the Heidelberg Catechism (which I quoted yesterday) very helpful in understanding James 5:14-16: “I trust [God, my Father] so much that I do not doubt he will provide  whatever I need for body and soul, and he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world.  He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father. … … Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he still upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty – all things, in fact, come to us  not by chance but from his fatherly hand.  … … We can [therefore] be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love.  All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.”

Moreover, regardless of how our Sovereign Lord might choose to answer our prayers, there is so much comfort to be found in the rich fellowship of praying friends!  On top of all this, perhaps the central point James is making concerns the anointing with oil and the forgiving of sins.  In the OT, things were purified by anointing with oil, and this spiritual healing is far more important than any physical healing.  Jesus told the paralytic in Mark 2, “Your sins are forgiven” – his physical healing was incidental to that; and so it is for us!

– Bruce Christian