Today, we’re in the second half of James 5. If you remember from last post, the first half of chapter 5 was discussing the temporary nature of wealth and poverty. James said that these days are the last days. He was talking about how everything is passing away. Either we will outlive our stuff, or our stuff will outlive us. James told the rich people who were oppressing the poor that their actions and motives of self-indulgence would condemn them before God. Then James switched gears and spoke about how important it was for us to be patient in the face of suffering. We are called to be patient in hard circumstances and trials. But the duration of this patience is “until the Lord’s coming”. There is no promises of earthly rest or respite from problems. The idea that Christians won’t experience suffering, trials, or hard times is unbiblical. James says we need to be patient until the Lord comes to us, or until He calls us to go to Heaven with Himself. Basically that means we need to be patient for our entire earthly lives.. So what does patience look like? James hints at that in verses 10-11. He said to look to the prophets and Job. The prophets pushed on ahead and kept God’s Kingdom in mind even when faced with persecution. They were patient and never really received the fullness of their promises here on Earth. In the book of Job, we see this man who suffered greatly, and despite having every reason to give up or try and find comfort and rest elsewhere, Job kept thinking about God. He kept thinking about how important righteousness and justice were to him. Job kept looking past his own suffering and trying to understand God’s nature. He didn’t choose to curse God and die, like his wife suggested, but he also didn’t want to live a life of relentless suffering. His questions when he cried out to God showed that He wanted to understand why things happen on this Earth the way they do. Why do some hate God and flourish, while others who are devoted to God end up suffering? How does someone who delights in God’s laws and righteousness end up sick and on the brink of death? Job always tried to understand suffering from a perspective that included a Biblical universe run by a God who was good. Many people use suffering as a reason or excuse to disbelieve in God. “Oh with all the suffering in the world, how does a good God exist?” But Job always believed in God even while he himself was suffering. Job never received all the answers to all of his questions, but in the end of the book, he did encounter God, and he was richly blessed by God. Some questions that come up while experiencing suffering are not answered, but remember Paul said that when he was his weakest, then God was strong. God works through these situations and often uses them to bring us closer to Him than ever. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not using an external agent. But maybe the changes that God wants to enact are internal. Maybe they are non-physical, since what is seen is passing away, but what is unseen will remain. So God helps us develop patience. Patience means waiting. Not sitting idle, but waiting with a purpose. Waiting means preparing. So to be patient we need to practice perseverance. We need to “work out” or exercise our minds to see beyond the here and now. We need to train ourselves to live in faith. Not faith in the temporary things that we see, but faith in the things that are unseen and permanent. How do we train ourselves to live in faith and what do we do while we’re being patient in our suffering? Don’t grumble against one another. The answer is Prayer.
13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.
Is life hard right now? Pray! Is life easy? Pray. Are you happy? Sing songs of praise. Are you sad? Pray. All of these instructions lead to prayer. What’s good about Prayer? Prayer leads to a mind that is no longer focused on here and now. Remember, James has been reminding us to think about eternity. James 1:9 The poor man should take pride in his high position, the rich man should take pride in his low position. James 2:1There should be no favoritism because we are all unique but equal parts of something bigger than ourselves. Prayers turn our thoughts away from our normal way of thinking. Normal thinking is NOW centered and SELF centered. That normal way of thinking is, what’s wrong? what don’t I like? what do I want? and consequently what should I work on or what should I do to get that? But When we pray, we aren’t working for something. We are talking to God and asking for God to bless us. That’s closer to how Salvation really is. God gives us a blessing, A gift that we don’t earn or work on. Prayer leads to God centered thinking instead of self centered thinking. When you start thinking about God, you begin to want to know more about God. Thinking back to the first half of James 5 about the example of Job. Even in the midst of great suffering, Job was thinking about God. He wanted to know more. Job knew the things that God liked, and the things that God hated. Job knew the difference between right and wrong. Job knew what righteousness was and what sins were. He didn’t just understand it mentally, but Job practiced righteousness, and actively avoided sin. Job delighted in following God’s commands, and he willingly gave offerings prescribed by the law to atone for sins (not just his own, but his family too). Job was grieved by wrongdoing. Job stood firm when studying the truth. And Job tried to be patient in the face of suffering. Job looked to the eternal realm when faced with earthly suffering. So when we pray, we cultivate a kind of mind that desires to understand God’s perspective. Prayer helps you to deal with the consequences of sin. It is effective when done alone, but it also helps to make prayer a group effort.
14 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. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up.
James tells the sick to call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil. Are you sick? Pray. Don’t pray alone, but call the elders or leaders of the church to pray with you. Prayers for the sick make a person well. Now, the idea of faith healing and prayer in lieu of medical care is dangerous. If your child is sick, you should go to the doctor and if it’s an emergency, you should go to the hospital. That’s the most current and established consensus on how to treat illnesses today. But when the Bible says to anoint the sick person with oil, some believe that it might actually be more like the medical treatment that’s current, regular and best practices of that day. Various essential oils were used for different aromatherapies. The frankincense oil was used as an anti-microbal remedy then, and both frankincense and myrrh were used to stop bleeding. Olive oil was used to clean and heal wounds. Also, the Jewish priests and prophets in the Old Testament were given responsibility of cleaning and medical care. In Moses’ law there weren’t just rules about what behavior was good and bad, and how to deal out justice when laws were broken, but there were also prescribed laws that outlined how to clean and when to clean, and who was unclean.
Even if the anointing oil wasn’t used as a traditional medical treatment, when we search from the accounts of the book of Acts, we had seen God regularly using miracles within the early church to spread his Gospel and establish a legitimacy to the new church. So oil may have been the best treatment of the day, or the miraculous healings may have been regular enough to warrant going to the church for at least some of your primary care. Regardless, if you have an infection, by all means, go to the doctor, get your prescription for an antibiotic. But just like you pray and give thanks before eating, Pray and give thanks before you take your medication; pray that it interacts well with your body, and pray that God will strengthen your body and heal you. If you need surgery, go to the hospital, but allow other people in the church to pray for the situation. Allow for pastors and brothers and sisters at church to pray for wisdom and clarity of the minds of the hospital staff, and the hands of the surgeons and nurses. Pray for God to work in your body to allow for your immune system to recover quickly and your body to respond favorably to treatment. With all we know about medicine, there’s still things that aren’t fully understood. Even if the doctor does his procedure flawlessly again and again, sometimes the treatment is successful and other times that same treatment isn’t. Why? For nearly everything, there’s a time where the doctor finishes his work, puts his tools down, and the patient just has to wait and see whether recovery does or doesn’t happen.. There have been many experiments and study on data trying to figure out how and why placebos work and help people. The mindset and outlook of the patient or the sick person is a very important factor to recovery. All that being said, James says that prayers will help make the sick person well, and the Lord will raise them up. In what way?
If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 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 what way does the Lord lift a person up? If the sick person has sinned, they will be forgiven. It’s important to understand that the most important thing we need in this world is forgiveness. Anything that can kill us will only end this temporary life, but we should be more concerned about the sin that can destroy our eternal lives. The greatest need we have at any moment is forgiveness from our sins. Forgiveness is more important than air. In Christ, we have that forgiveness that will allow us to live forever with God. But once you become a Christian, you don’t lose that need for forgiveness. You still need it as much as you ever did. The only difference is you know where the forgiveness comes from, and how it works. You know how your greatest need will be taken care of, if you are In Christ. Since that most important need has been met in those who have Christ, we should continue to foster a life that is not captive or enslaved to sin. We should therefore continue to confess sins and repent of sins so that we can pray for each other and experience a true healing. Remember, sickness and sin are related, the wages of sin is death, and the way death and sickness entered the world was through sin. You are not sick because you sinned, and if you have a disease, it’s not because you have a lack of faith or you specifically did something wrong. But Sin is to blame for the fact that the condition of sickness even exists in the first place. Sin is to blame that we live in a fallen, imperfect world. In this fallen world we experience illness and are impacted by the consequences of disobedience. So the way to have true healing and true life is by confessing and repenting of sin when you know about it. When you are experiencing sickness, you can use it as a reminder that you are not perfect and the world is not perfect. Sickness is a reminder that we are not home. We are not in paradise, we are ambassadors of another realm, citizens of heaven who are living here in the world, but we are not of it. You can use your sickness as a reminder of where you are, who you were, who you are, and who you are becoming.. A reminder that you were a sinner who was enslaved. That you were and are and will be in need of forgiveness. That Christ came and paid the price and set you free. That in God’s eyes, you are his blameless son or daughter, clothed in the righteous that you couldn’t achieve. To really live a good and abundant Christian life, you need to be freed from sin. When you remind yourself of those things, you are reiterating and re-establishing your relationship with God. Sure, you might not be physically healthy immediately, but you have used this affliction in the physical realm to strengthen your appreciation of a blessing in the spiritual realm.
17 Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
When we read about Elijah, he seems like a super hero. He was able to do all sorts of miracles. Raising the dead, praying for a drought. Praying for an altar of Baal to do nothing while praying for an altar to God to spontaneously combust (even after being drenched with 4 jugs of water). James wants us to know that Elijah was a human, just like you and I. The power that Elijah had was not his own power. It was the power of God. It was the power that comes from earnest prayer. Sometimes we can be double minded and pray with a skeptical mindset. James warned us of that double-mindedness in chapter 1. If we pray skeptically, we will be disappointed. But when we pray earnestly, it is effective. Earnest prayer means prayer that is trusting and faithful. Earnest prayer is diligent prayer along with an expectation of success. Christians today don’t always pray earnestly. I know firsthand, because I didn’t pray earnestly. I used to think that my prayer was ineffective, and I didn’t always see the point. I wasn’t praying consistently and when I did, I wasn’t sure it was doing anything. But what I started to do was I decided to pray every night, and when I did, I would write my prayers down in a notebook. It’s kind of like praying and journaling mixed together. When I started, I tried to pray for new things and different people than who I prayed for the day before. If it was already in my Journal, I would try to think of something new. I was going for quantity and idea generation. It was kind of like a prayer brainstorm. I began to realize how many different people God had put in my life. How many people are out there that I care about. As the pages filled up, it got harder and harder to come up with things that hadn’t already been said. Then I stopped going for quantity and started to pray whatever came in my mind. I prayed as much as I could think of first, and then when I was out of things to say, I would read over old prayers and re-pray for those things too. I would start to highlight or notate things that I didn’t need to pray for anymore, because something had happened or the situation had changed. And in doing that exercise, when I looked over my old prayers and saw how many I could skip, I saw that God had answered many of them. There was progress in my thought process. There were patterns that I had never noticed, there were answered prayers, and there were reminders to keep praying for older things that were no longer fresh on my mind. What was the change? I think my prayers became more earnest from that exercise, because when I wrote the prayer down, I demonstrated a belief that I thought the prayers were worth documenting, recording, reviewing, and remembering. People don’t make an effort to remember or record or recall things that are unimportant. If I didn’t think a prayer was worth remembering, I must not have thought a prayer was worth much. If I didn’t think a thought was worthy of considering, I wouldn’t keep track of it.
19 My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, 20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
These last two verses in James are a good reminder about how important evangelism is. There are people out there who are wandering around. People are living in error and ignorant of the truth. Some people interpret this to mean that you can cover over your sins by preaching and converting sinners. It’s unsound because it rejects salvation by grace. Other people read this to mean that it is possible to lose your salvation. They read this like, “If you are a Christian, you can wander away from the truth, and another person can bring you back and save you from death.” But that interpretation of the text is not Biblical. Why? For a few reasons. First because the person who turns a sinner from the error of their ways isn’t the source of salvation. Only Jesus can save you from sin. Only Jesus’s blood can cover your sins and offer forgiveness. What is our role? We provide the truth. We turn people away from the errors of their ways. We lead them to the savior, and when they see the savior for who He really is, they receive salvation. Salvation doesn’t come from me or you or any other person, teacher, pastor, or evangelist. Salvation comes from Jesus Christ. What does this first part, the wandering from the truth look like? It looks like unacknowledged sin, or living incorrectly. Those errors are caused by a problem with doctrine or a problem with understanding scripture. If somebody is clearly not understanding something that the Bible teaches, it’s our job to use scripture to correct them.
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness
If you are wandering about, if you are sinning, if you don’t understand scripture, then you aren’t following the true Gospel. You might say you’re a Christian, but you haven’t truly become a doer of the word. When this happens, there are two alternatives. A true Christian would endeavor to be corrected by scripture, excited to surrender more of their wills to God’s true will. In that case, the true Christian, who’s name was in the book of life since the beginning of time, was always a Christian who had appeared to wander because of a lack of understanding and comprehension.
A false christian, or a “Christian” in name only would encounter the situation differently. They would be wandering around, sinning, and they would receive truth. Maybe from someone who has read James 5:19-20. That truth of their sin would offend them, smack them in the face with a healthy dose of humility, but instead of being challenged, they would be angry. They would be angry and offended that anyone would try to use something from the Bible to teach them something. Those Hypocrites! They would continue to go about their business, believing something erroneous about God, the world, and their own human nature. They would deny their own sin, and put their faith in something that isn’t really Biblical.
The other way this false doctrine could manifest itself is by NOT sinning, but by following the law for the wrong reason. For instance, If I were living just as I currently do, but I had this thought in the back of my mind that I really should pray every day. There’s nothing wrong with that thought as it is. I should pray every day. But now let’s say I missed a day and decided that I was now guilty and condemned and lost, then my faith is not a true faith. My faith was actually in Christ, PLUS daily prayer. I had faith that Christ’s blood could cover all my sins, EXCEPT for the sin of missing times of prayer. If I were a false Christian would live in despair whenever I missed prayer, and I would doubt God’s goodness and my salvation. If I were a true Christian would need to renounce my current faith and my current doctrine, because my salvation WAS based in my ability to pray. One might say my salvation is based primarily on Jesus blood, but also my ability to pray. But if his Blood isn’t powerful enough to cover my spotty prayer life, then it isn’t the Blood of Christ that’s described in the Bible, and really my salvation is actually ENTIRELY based on my works. You can’t have a salvation that’s 99% grace and 1% works. Because IF that 1% works is enough to offset the grace, then it’s STILL more powerful than the grace because your salvation is dependent upon it. So let’s say I can’t shake that faith in my prayer. When someone preaches grace, I will deny it because in my mind I really am putting my trust in prayer. If I am never able to shake that faith in my prayers, I am not a true Christian. If someone teaches me truth, I will deny it.
In that case, the effort to teach truth might have appeared to backfire, but it was never about the teacher. It was never about the brother or sister who is trying to direct a sinner to the savior. The brother is not rejected here. The Savior was rejected. The sound doctrine of the Gospel is what’s rejected.
So, if we see someone wandering, we can either tell them this truth, or we can allow them to wander away from this truth. We could hide the truth to spare their feelings and indulge our fear and pride, or we could speak the truth. If someone was deceptive, they could knowingly mislead sinners and direct them to wander further away from the truth, or they could point sinners to the savior. Whenever a sinner sees the Savior for who He is, and they love Him, and repent their sins will be covered and they will be saved from death. If you have trusted fully in Jesus Christ as the source of your salvation then you are saved from death and the multitude of all sins you’ve ever committed and will ever commit have been covered. You were bought for a price, your debt has been paid. You’ve been adopted into God’s Family and reconciled to God. You are part of the church of Jesus Christ, and you are a member of a great and glorious body who will spend an eternity in the presence of God. Your life on this earth will have an abundance and meaning that gives joy to your days. These days won’t all be easy, healthy, prosperous, or happy (joy and happiness are two different things) and the days will come to an end at some point, but our time on Earth is not all that we have. And while our time here will be over, our time there will never end. Our temporary hardships are not even comparable to the vast riches of our eternity with God. All this is possible by the work of Jesus Christ. This is the greatest possible gift to receive and having the ability to share it with people who need that is a great privilege. I continue to teach that here, determined that everyone can come away from here understanding it. Then I pray to God that everyone who hears will eventually come to believe.