A Living Faith Evidenced in Prayer – Part 3 (James 5:13-18)

Click here to read part 1.

Click here to read part 2.

Working through the difficult interpretive decisions of James 5:13–18 is important, but let’s not miss the main concern of the passage: the prayer of faith.

Whose prayer and whose faith?

Verse 14 is clear that it is the elders who are doing the praying. And since it is supposed to be a prayer of faith, it seems that the faith that is primarily in view would be of those praying that prayer of faith: the elders’ faith.

This makes perfect sense if this is in the context of the miraculous apostolic age, and they were still working miracles like the disciples in Matthew 17:19-20. The lack of faith of the disciples (not the sick person) explained why some were not healed. The elders must share the conviction that God has the power to miraculously heal through them. The kind of prayer to be prayed is one of a fervent wish; it’s a unique word for prayer rather than a common petition.

Certainly, applying this passage to ourselves today outside the apostolic age will require a more general prayer for God’s providential healing (or perhaps miraculous healing apart from our abilities to bring it about—this would not be guaranteed because our situational context is different).

This brings us to the connection between the healing and the forgiveness of sins. It is at this point that many are persuaded that the passage must be speaking of spiritual healing all along rather than physical healing. But in reality, this is the strongest evidence that the passage must be understood as physical healing. Why is that? Moo explains it well:

James encourages the Sick person to deal with any potential spiritual causes of the illness that he is experiencing. The “if” (kan) is therefore doubly important: it shows that James by no means assumes that sickness is caused by sin, and it makes a spiritual interpretation of the passage difficult, since it is difficult to imagine a condition of spiritual “weakness” that would not be a product of sin.¹

In other words, Moo argues that the “if” makes sin only a possibility.²

The prayer is not a guarantee to remove all sicknesses, but it may be that if the sin caused the sickness and one repent then God may remove the chastisement. If you have made sin right and you’re not healed, then sin was not the cause. If sin is the cause of God’s chastisement, then making it right will remove the chastisement—He won’t continue to keep you down.³

Is this prayer of faith an unconditional promise of healing? There are several options:

• Limited to the apostolic age
• Limited to only sicknesses brought on by chastening/sin—the unconditional promise relates only to those conditions and not the general need to pray for healing from all sicknesses
• It’s a general precept stated absolutely but not actually an absolute promise cf. John 14:14; 2 Timothy 4:20; 2 Corinthians 12 —Matthew 21:22 “All things you ask, believing you will receive” (many psalms and proverbs seem to be absolute as well)
• It is an absolute promise that will be fulfilled in God’s timing—eternal restoration .
• It’s only fulfilled with enough persistent faith; cf. James 1:6–8.

The first three options seem like the best possibilities to me.

Moo sums it up well: “A prayer for healing, then, must usually be qualified by a recognition that God’s will in the matter is supreme. And it is clear in the NT that God does not always will to heal.”⁴

Therefore, with these truths in mind, what should our application be?

• Confess sins—making reconciliation with God or others (not a general airing out of dirty laundry to everyone but to whom you must make things right).
• Pray fervently—prayer is a toll that God uses with powerful effects.
• Wait on God for healing—if it is God’s will and related to an appeal to remove chastisement.

In the next post we’ll examine the power of prayer exemplified by Elijah.

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Kevin Collins has served as a junior high youth leader in Michigan, a missionary in Singapore, a Christian School teacher in Utah, and a Bible writer for the BJU Press. He currently works for American Church Group of South Carolina. He also blogs at his other two sites, Gospel in the Marketplace and The Fire and Hammer.

Photo by Bret Kavanaugh on Unsplash

1. Moo, James, 243. [↩]
2. For further explanation and support that this is a third-class condition making it a contingent possibility rather than a first-class condition making it an assumption that it is in fact true see Dan Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 696–99 where he lists James 5:15 as an example of a third-class condition on page 699. [↩]
3. See Martin, James, Word Biblical Commentary, 210; see also Davids’ commentary on James regarding James 5:15. [↩]
4. Moo, James, 244. [↩]