J. Alec Motyer
"Is any among you sick? He is to 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 him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him. " James 5:14-15
THIS is, of course, a passage of Scripture which is used in the context of a healing ministry, but I want to suggest that it must be considered in a much wider context if we are to understand it properly.
1. The Context of Trouble
The whole passage concerns the diversity of circumstances in life, and particularly the subject of trouble. It starts off by asking "Is any of you in trouble?" The word used is quite general, not focusing on any particular trouble which we call sickness, but trouble of any kind. Such a man is to pray. It may be that he is feeling cheerful; in that case let him sing praises. It begins with trouble, but I would prefer to speak of this context as that of divine providence. How are we to behave through the whole of life?
It is comparatively easy to be cheerful and to acknowledge God's goodness when the sun is shining and everything is marvellous, but life is by no means always like that. Neither, of course, is it always all of the other sort. Life is an extra-ordinary mixture, containing periods of trouble and periods of cheerfulness and sometimes a blend of both of them. The opening question of this passage in James 5 really amounts to this [5/6] question: 'Is your God big enough for the whole of life?'
Some people have a God who is big enough for the cheerful bits, but then they are completely bowled over by the adversities of life. Their God is not big enough for every experience, and so the call in verse 13 is that we should refer the whole of life to God. He is big enough for every situation; if there is trouble, then He offers the resource of prayer, and if there is cheerfulness, then there is the resource of praise.
2. The Context of Prayer
This gives us the key to the second context relating to our verse, and that is the context of prayer. Really this, I think, is what the whole passage is about. If we look from verse 13 onwards to verse 17, we find that prayer is mentioned in almost every verse. This whole passage is concerned not with a healing ministry but with the prayer life of the believer: "he is to pray" (v.13), "let them pray over him" (v.14), "the prayer of faith" (v.15), "pray for one another", "the supplication of a righteous man ..." (v.16). From then until verse 18 we have our attention drawn to the prophet Elijah at prayer. So the whole passage is about prayer, so much so that if we wish to understand what it has to say about a healing ministry in the local church, we must be careful that we do not interpret the reference to healing in a way that violates the whole doctrine of praying.
There is the wonderful promise that "the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up" (v.15). Does that mean that there is always going to be automatic healing if we operate the technique as specified in verse 14 and get it right? To say that would be to violate the Bible doctrine of praying. When we read what the Scriptures have to say about praying, we find that over and over again we are enticed into the of place of prayer by blank cheques from God. 'Whatever you ask you will receive.' 'Come on,' says God, 'ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' If we want to change the metaphor, we may say that the door of prayer swings open wide, though I prefer that of the blank cheque. We are drawn into the place of prayer by the sheer bounty of God. We must never forget, though, that there are Scriptural safeguards in this matter. "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7). Commenting on this verse, Calvin says, 'God does not permit us undisciplined asking'. Over and over again, prayer is hemmed in. If we ask contrary to His Name, He will not give us what we ask. Pessimists may comment that they knew that it was too good to be true and that they knew it couldn't happen like that. What I want to ask you is if you ever thanked God that it can't happen like that?
If automatically we got just what we asked, when we asked for it and in the way that we have asked for it, we might soon be frightened ever to pray again. Prayer is such a magnificent instrument that God can never give it in an unrestricted way into the unwise hands of sinners. If we got automatically whatever we asked, we would visit upon ourselves not blessing but a bane and would minister to our friends not blessing but cursing. Prayer is hemmed around by the benefits of the restrictive will of God so that He will only give us that which is good.
