What Does James Say about Healing and Restoration?
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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: 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. 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.
James 5 - The Message
13–15 Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
16–18 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
19–20 My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.
In a day of pandemics, vaccines, and medical uncertainty, the question on more minds than ever is “How can we have supernatural healing?” Many I’ve been frustrated when I believe God for miracles but fail to see them happen. Much of this is due not to the why or why not, but rather the how. Our God is a God of order, and like many other aspects of Christian life, different problems have different solutions.
For example, not all sicknesses originate from the same source and consequently have distinct approaches in how they should be handled. In the above passage, James offered some insight into the early church’s multifaceted approach to the healing of the sick. To understand this, we must consider the context of the entire Book of James.
James’s epistle has become a champion in the balanced emphasis between justified faith and dutiful obedience. Unlike Paul, who often addressed those who felt the work of Christ was not complete and needed to be supplemented by works of the Law, James addressed those who felt a mental affirmation of faith was all they needed for salvation. James admitted that faith is the basis of salvation, but faith that stays only in the mind is not genuine faith at all (2:14, 26).
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Real faith produces action. James’s purpose for this teaching can be condensed into one phrase: when faith is idle, sin is rampant (1:22–24).
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
God’s powerful Word is the antidote for our souls from the filth and perversion of the flesh. This, of course, is only accomplished when one positions himself as a “doer” of the Word of God (1:21–23).
Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
James was not writing to people who needed to have faith but to those who needed to live their faith. He stated that without faith-filled obedience, the doorway for sin is wide open, and when sin enters the room, it brings death (1:15).
Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Many Christians often fail to recognize that sin’s consequences are not only spiritual, but they also can be experienced in physical ways. Indeed, sin imposes itself in many ways that often go unrecognized: its inability to harness the tongue’s destructive power (3:1–12), its ability to rob us of godly wisdom (3:14–15), its capacity to cause social division (4:11–5:12), and finally, its consequences are not limited to causing sickness and suffering in our physical bodies (5:13–16).
Clearly, not all sickness is a direct result of sin. However, James’s prescription on how the church should handle the healing of the sick stands out from all other biblical examples. Nowhere else in Scripture are believers commanded to “pray” for the sick as we would think of prayer in the formal sense. It may be hard to believe, but in every New Testament example of divine healing there was no formal prayer directed to God. The commission given by Jesus and demonstrated by the early church is to lay hands on the sick and command the sickness to leave (Mark 16:17–18; Matthew 10:1, 8; Acts 3:6, 5:12, 6:8, 8:6–7; 9:34, 19:11–12; 20:9).
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
This aspect of the Christian life has been freely given by God to believers. To beg God for something He has already given to the church is an unbiblical approach to the healing of the sick.
With this understanding, why does the Book of James contain the anomaly of formal prayer offered for the sick? It is helpful to understand that not all sicknesses have the same cause and therefore do not all have the same remedy. Scripture indicates there are four origins for sickness:
Organic (caused by environmental or physical elements that bring harm to the body).
Demonic (Matthew 12:22; Luke 13:11–16) Sin (Matthew 9:2; John 5:14)
The will of God (John 9:3; II Corinthians 12:5–10)
Thus, in this passage, James isn’t dealing with sickness caused by a natural source like bacteria or a physical misfortune. He is addressing the sin as much as the sickness itself—sicknesses that are birthed as a result of sinful behavior. Therefore, there is an issue with the church’s original methodology for supernatural healing. The church has been given authority to heal sicknesses but not to forgive sin or reverse its consequences. When Jesus dealt with this issue, He had the authority to forgive sins, thus reversing the ailment. James knew the procedures declared by Jesus for divine healing—he was likely there when they were first issued. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume he wasn’t altering the original formula but providing further instruction if the sickness had a much deeper cause.
This lesson does not delve into the theological significance of which sins cause sickness or at what point the sickness might occur. Instead, it addresses the reality that we are often unfazed when a despondent soul leaves our altars unhealed. This passage in James reveals that if a person was continually living with sickness in the early church, it was not taken lightly. Praying for them was more than a quick brush of the hand and a few uttered words; it was an entire event.
First, the sick person would formally call for a meeting with the elders.
The elders would anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, followed by an effectual fervent prayer of faith.
If he still wasn’t healed, he would confess to the elders the sin that might have caused his sickness. Yet we often quickly move on when a halfhearted prayer does not bring forth fruit.
James culminated His instruction of prayer for the sick with the powerful assertion, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” The prayers of a righteous man can profit on behalf of a sinful man. In other words, keep believing until God says otherwise! When healing doesn’t come, we may need to adjust our approach. Ultimately, we must strive to be both intentional and biblically positioned in order for our prayers to yield more consistent results.