James 5:12-18

Final Exhortation To Prayer And Faith (James 5:12).

Having faced up men and women to judgment in different ways James now ends as he began by putting great emphasis on the need for faith and prayer, and openness in the fellowship, and on reminding us that prayer is effective for anyone who like Elijah had to undergo trials and testings. This parallels James 1:2. Only too often this part of James is read as though it was simply all about healing. But that is to degrade the narrative. It is rather all about faith and prayer and the wholeness and wellbeing of all in each fellowship. It tells us when we should pray, when we should praise, and when we will need the prayers of others.

It again reveals James' love for the poetic, although we must not by that see it as indicating that it is not to be taken seriously. Indeed one of the purposes of Hebrew poetry was to make important instructions memorable so that they could be observed, and it actually helps to bring out the emphases. We can read it as follows:

a ‘Is any among you suffering? Let him pray.

b Is any cheerful? Let him sing praise.

c Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church,

d And let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord,

e And the prayer of faith will save him who is sick,

d And the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, it will be forgiven him.

c Confess therefore your sins one to another,

b And pray one for another, that you may be made whole (healed).

a The supplication of a righteous man avails much in its working.'

Note that in ‘a' the suffering are told to pray, and in the parallel we are told of the effectiveness of prayer. In ‘b' we have the one who is whole and therefore able to praise, and in the parallel they are to pray for one another that they might be whole. In ‘c' the sick are to call in the elders of the church (corporate concern), and in the parallel God's people are to confess towards one another any faults that lie between them (corporate concern). In ‘d' they anoint in the Name of the Lord, and in the parallel the Lord will raise them up. Centrally in ‘e' the prayer of faith ‘saves' (heals and obtains forgiveness for) the sick