The Prayer of Faith

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

This morning, we come to the end of our study of James. I hope it has been as encouraging and challenging for you, as it has been for me.

In this final section, James gives several parting thoughts that are loosely connected to one another. We’re starting in James 5 verse 12.

[12] But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.

Once again, James is quoting the sermon on the mount. And once again, he’s targeting our speech. Speak the truth. Keep your word.

Scripture allows oaths and vows to be taken under certain circumstances, but it had become common for people to use them frivolously. Christians shouldn’t need to do that. Our integrity should speak for itself. We shouldn’t need to convince people we’re telling the truth.

We all know the story of the boy who cried “wolf”. He lied about the wolf so many times that no one believed him when the wolf actually showed up, despite his efforts to convince them. That’s verse 12.

[13] Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

If you’re down, pray. If you’re up, rejoice. This is a verse about godliness. Regardless of our circumstances, godliness is living with a mind and heart pointed towards heaven.

As Christians, we live with one foot in a canoe and one foot on the shore. The canoe is the world. Heaven is the shore. Standing up with both feet in a canoe is a bad idea. But with one foot on the shore, you can manage to keep your balance.

Prayer and praise keep us spiritually grounded in the highs and lows of life. In both cases, we are looking to God, we’re leaning towards heaven, instead of finding our support from the world.

[14] Is anyone among you sick? 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.

I love this verse, because it stretches me personally.

This is not the only time anointing the sick with oil is mentioned in the New Testament. The twelve disciples do this in Mark 6. It’s something Jesus taught them to do.

It’s something we do in our church, in obedience to James 5. And so, I want to encourage you, if you are sick or suffering from chronic pain or mental illness, call for the elders. We will pray over you and anoint you with oil.

Sometimes God heals people. Sometimes He doesn’t. It’s not magic. It doesn’t obligate God to perform a miracle. Jesus did not heal every sick person he encountered.

But look at what James says in the next verse.

[15] And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Notice, James does not promise that God will heal the sick person. Instead, he promises that God will save them and raise them up. What does that mean? What do we do with this verse?

I want to spend some time on this, because it’s important. In the first century, the culture over-spiritualized sickness and disability. If you had an illness or a physical problem, most people assumed you were being punished or cursed by the gods.

Jesus explicitly denies this in John 9. They encounter a man who was born blind and the disciples ask him, who sinned, this man or his parents, to cause his suffering? Jesus says neither. That’s not how it works.

But in our culture, we tend to under-spiritualize sickness and disability. We think of it only as germs and genes. You caught a bug or you inherited it biologically. It’s just science. But that’s wrong too.

Sickness and disability exist because sin exists. Humans weren’t created to suffer. Sin causes suffering. And sometimes our personal sins do lead to greater suffering. If I don’t take care of my body, I may suffer for it. If I drive recklessly, I may suffer for it.

Very often, when Jesus healed people in the Gospels, He also declared their sins forgiven. James makes the same connection here. There is a connection between our body and our soul that we tend to ignore.

And what James is telling us here is that God is concerned with our body, but He is more concerned with our soul.

This has led to some confusion in the church, especially in the last hundred years because of the faith healing movement. Some people teach that physical healing is guaranteed if only you have enough faith.

That’s false and incredibly discouraging to some believers. Paul asked God to take away a physical ailment and he was denied. Jesus prayed in the garden for God to remove the cup of wrath and even Jesus was denied!

But God can use our prayers and this practice of anointing to encourage us spiritually even if He chooses not to heal us physically.

[16] Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

This verse reinforces the previous one and adds confession. It also challenges our understanding of prayer. Let’s talk about confession first, because it is easy to misunderstand this. When and how should we “confess our sins to one another”? James doesn’t tell us, but the rest of Scripture can help guide us.

If we’ve sinned against another person, we should go to that person privately and confess. This doesn’t have to include all the things the other person may not be aware of. For instance, you’re not going to accomplish anything constructive by going to someone to say, “I envied you” or “I lusted after you”. Confess those things to God and move on.

But if you’ve committed a public sin, something that offended a lot of people or may be known by a lot of people, then public confession may be appropriate. That’s something the elders can help you discern.

The goal of confession is humility and restored fellowship. It’s not atonement. No one is going to give you penance here. Sin is a spiritual problem that God dealt with at the cross, but confession if good for us.

When I was a youth pastor, I often found out about things that my students had done… things their parents needed to know about. But I always gave them 3 days to tell their parents before I did. Why? Because parents would always rather hear it from their child. And it was good for the student. It was good for the relationship.

The same thing is true for all of us. God already knows what we did and He’s already forgiven it in Christ, but He wants us to know what we did and then experience His love and mercy all over again.

Now let’s circle back and talk about prayer. James says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

I think we all greatly underestimate the power of prayer or we would do it more often, myself included. In Revelation 8, John sees smoke rising up from an altar mixed with the prayers of the saints. And when it reaches God, He responds to it and initiates His divine plan to bring the end times. That’s powerful!

The Bible wants us to understand that there is real power in prayer. In some mysterious way, God incorporates our prayers into His own sovereign plan! And James provides a perfect illustration.

[17] Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

Notice he doesn’t call Elijah a prophet. He emphasizes that Elijah was a man like us, but God uses his imperfect prayers.

[18] Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

We don’t have because we don’t ask. That’s not a guarantee that everything we pray for God will give us, but we are far more likely to see it if we ask. That’s especially true if we’re asking for something that benefits others or furthers the kingdom of God.

Now, let’s look at the final two verses.

[19] My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back,

[20] let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

James saves his final words for the wanderer – the lost sheep. This could be someone who is struggling with doubt. It could be someone who has fallen into a pattern of sin and feels guilty coming to church. It could be someone who has let the cares of the world crowd out the things of God.

James ends his letter by encouraging the church to go after those people! And if you put this together with everything James said before about casting judgment on others, this makes perfect sense. If you see someone wandering, go get them!

Instead of pushing people away from fellowship, we should be trying to restore them to fellowship. We should be helping one another seek repentance. And the truth is, one day this may be you and one day this may be me. We are all prone to wander.

We don’t know from the grammar if James is saying my soul is saved or the person I’m bringing back, but it doesn’t matter. This is what the church does. We stay united in Christ. We don’t give up on each other.

In the end, some may not be restored. But we leave the door open to the possibility.

This is a vision of the Church that God is providing us through the letter of James: a people who speak the truth in love, a people who, in suffering, instinctively pray, and in joy, instinctively sing, a people who do not suffer or rejoice or even get sick in isolation, but who call for the elders, who gather around the hurting, who anoint and intercede in the name of Jesus because they really believe God is near and God sees.

This is a vision of a group of people who confess sins to one another, who carry one another’s burdens, and who love each other enough to notice when someone starts to drift and to go after them until, by God’s grace, they are brought back.

That is the kind of church James is calling us to be: not perfect, but whole—undivided in our devotion to Jesus, honest with our words, earnest in our prayers, and patient and persistent in our love.

All of this is possible only because of our union with Christ. It’s possible because He gives more grace. May the Lord make us more and more into that kind of church, for his glory and for the good of a watching world.