James 5:13-20 – Famous Last Words

If you have read Paul’s letters you may know that Paul often concludes with greetings to people in the church and some version of the phrase “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.” But James does no such thing. His last words make his letter feel less like a letter and more like a collection of encouraging phrases to the early Jewish believers.

Undoubtedly, James’s words were encouraging to his audience, but I am not convinced that they are merely the last in a collection of encouraging sayings. James has constructed a quite sophisticated letter to the early Jewish believers and these final verses are the logical conclusion to his letter — they tie up all the loose ends and provide the final layer to the sandwich James has constructed. But his last words are even a bit more than that; they are a direct response to James 1:1 and explains how the early Jewish believers were to conduct their religious lives now that they were no longer living near the temple or able to complete the rigorous demands of the Mosaic sacrificial laws. James begins by writing,

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

James 5:13a

This almost seems like a rhetorical question, doesn’t it? Suffering has been a constant theme throughout James’s letter. He introduces suffering in James 1:2-7, and again in James 5:7-12. James knew they were suffering; so why the question?

James is obviously emphasizing the need for prayer — the need for believers to continually seek God in all circumstances. But what isn’t so obvious is what James doesn’t say. James doesn’t tell them to complain, to fight back, to rise up and battle their oppressors; he simply tells them to pray.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see injustice — particularly injustice flowing in my direction — I want to act; sitting down and praying is the last thing on my mind. But that is exactly what James instructs his audience to do. When feeling the turn of suffering’s screws we must show patience and seek God’s wisdom (James 1:5-9). Next, he writes,

Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

James 5:13b

This, on the contrary, doesn’t seem like a rhetorical question. How much cheer can you feel while you are suffering? Suffering tends to singularly focus our attention and cloud our vision with obsidian-colored glasses; everything looks dark and bleak. Yet, James tells the believer to sing praises when encountering things for which they can be cheerful.

But James does not just mean pleasant circumstances. James reminds them that when they remain steadfast under trials and suffering God gives them the crown of life (James 1:9-12). It is for God’s eternal work in their life that James wants his readers to be cheerful. Cheerfulness should not be tied to temporalities; cheerfulness should be rooted in the work of God (James 1:16-18). James wants believers to know that regardless of circumstances there is always a reason to be cheerful and sing praise to God. In light of that, James then writes,

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. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

James 5:14-15a

Of course, being human, we will always find ourselves sick and infirm in one way or the other. In our modern times, when we get sick we don’t go to a priest, we go to the doctor, the pharmacy, and then to rehab of some sort. But in the times of James, there was no HMO…

No, that’s not quite what James had in mind. But good try!

It is this question which indicates what James is really saying. Read Leviticus 11-15 and you will find laws about unclean animals, human uncleanliness, childbirth impurity, leprosy, puss, bodily discharges (Ewww!), mold, mildew, and mourning for the Brown’s loss. (Okay, that last one isn’t in there, but I really need a place to go where I can be healed from my emotional pain!) When an Israelite was sick, unclean, or otherwise in need of healthcare, they went to the priest at the temple who knew what to do. Jesus even enforced these laws when he told the healed lepers “Go and show yourselves to the priest” (Luke 17:14). Not only did the priest know how to diagnose and treat illness, but the ones who were sick learned that healing came from God. For us, this doesn’t eliminate the need for medical professionals, but we should not be shy in alerting other believers about our illnesses and we should recognize that healing comes only from God.

So this is all well and good, but for the Jewish believers to whom James wrote, the priests and the temple were no longer an option. What were they supposed to do? Where were they supposed to go?

James uses two words in James 5:14 that appear to be somewhat innocuous, but they are anything but. James tells the sick person that they should go to see the presbyteros of the ekklesia and they (presbyteros) will pray over them and anoint them with oil.

Okay, that’s Greek; what did he really say?

Well, presbyteros is a Greek word meaning “elder” and ekklesia is a Greek word meaning “a gathering;” it is also the word we use for “church.” Instead of instructing the Jewish believers to go to the temple to have the priests pray over them as was required under the Mosaic law, James tells them to go to the church and have the elders pray over them.

This simple sentence is the only place in his letter that James uses these words presbyteros and ekklesia.

Big deal.

Well, it is a big deal. Take a look back to James 1:1, the matching layer of James’s sandwich, and you will find the word diaspora which means “scattered ones” or “scattering.” Maybe now you will see the beauty of what James is doing. James writes to those who have been scattered (diaspora; James 1:1) and tells them they need to be gathered (ekklesia; James 5:14) together. And in this gathering — the church and its elders — the scattered Jewish believers will find their new home; the replacement for the temple and its priests.

And those functions once assigned to the temple and the priests in the Mosaic law have now been reassigned to the church and its elders. There is no longer a need for sin sacrifices — Jesus took care of that — but there is still the need for encouragement during times of suffering, praise for what God has done, and healing in times of sickness. The burnt offering (payment for deliberate sins), the grain offering (gratitude to God), the sin offering (payment for unintentional sins), the guilt offering (a compensatory offering), the ordination offering (for new priests), the peace offering (gratitude to God) — all once administered by the priests in the temple are all summarily combined into these words of James: Are you suffering? Are you cheerful? Are you sick? The gathered church (ekklesia) and its elders (presbyteros) are now where the dispersed (diaspora) believers go for these functions.

But James is not finished. He continues by writing,

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

James 5:15b-16a

It is not only suffering, cheerfulness, and sickness for which the church provides the answers; it is also sin. A quick look at Leviticus chapters 4-6 will reveal the detailed requirements for those who sinned. But now, James writes, such sacrifices mandated and performed during the time of the temple and the priests were replaced with the church and its elders. We no longer need to kill Lamb Chop, Derek, or Shaun; Jesus’s work on the cross saved us once-and-for-all, (not to mention many generations of sheep).

Even so, we still sin, right? At least I do. And James says that when we sin we are to confess our sins to one another. But notice that James places this command following the section where he told believers to go to the elders of the church. Perhaps he meant we should confess our sins to the elders, but it seems more likely that James is telling us to confess to “one another,” meaning other believers in the church; the elder doesn’t seem to be exclusively implied here.

But we must not forget that we are to confess. Just because Jesus forgives our sins by his work on the cross it doesn’t mean that we can immediately forget our sins. It also doesn’t mean that we should keep them to ourselves. When we sin — and we will sin — we need to confess our sins to one another; we need to tell another person in the church. The sinner needs to confess. It does no good to toss the sin in the back closet and forget about it. We, as sinners, need to hear that we are forgiven. And if we are that person to whom our brother or sister is confessing, we need to offer forgiveness. By offering forgiveness we act on behalf of Jesus and we reinforce the forgiveness he has made possible. Offering forgiveness and receiving forgiveness need to be active works of those living in the church.

James continues his discussion on prayer by writing this about its power,

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 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. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

James 5:16b-18

James provides an example about effective prayer that is surprisingly not Jesus. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours — he was human and he was sinful — and his prayers worked. But note that James qualifies this by writing, “the prayer of a righteous person.” We could be tempted to quote Romans 3:10 which says, “None is righteous, no, not one” but that isn’t the sort of righteousness to which James refers. The righteousness James is talking about is that which comes as a result of trusting God and acting accordingly; active faith in God produces righteousness (Hebrews 11, esp. vv 7).

This doesn’t mean that as long as we are checking the proper Christian boxes we will get whatever we want when we pray. But it does means that God will do his will on earth through the prayers of those who maintain an active, personal, and intimate relationship with God. We can certainly continue to pray for our desires, but we must remember that Jesus didn’t get his prayer answered in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-48) and God didn’t remove Paul’s thorn in the flesh (II Corinthians 12:7-12).

James concludes his letter with what appears to be a very difficult verse to understand. He writes,

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 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 5:19-20

It seems odd that James would say that we can save our soul from death by helping a sinner return to the truth. It also seems odd that this is how James chooses to end his letter. But I was reading the Old Testament a few years ago and came across some verses in Ezekiel chapter 3 that helped me understand what I believe James is really saying. They read as follows:

And at the end of seven days, the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.

Ezekiel 3:16-21

James, a devout Jew, seems to be recapping these words recorded by the prophet Ezekiel who was sent to the people of Israel. Prophets often speak about the future, but more frequent are the words they speak about the consequences of not following God’s ways. Just as Ezekiel was the watchman for the house of Israel, James seems to be telling believers that they are now the watchmen for the church. I know much could be discussed here regarding theology, ecclesiology, and even eschatology, but James is not writing a theological treatise to academics. James is writing the first letter to the Jewish believers in the first century. He has just told them that the church (ekklesia) replaces the temple and that the elders (presbyteros) replace the priests, but now, it seems, James is saying that believers play the role of the prophet when they turn wayward believers and sinners back to the truth.

This is a great responsibility with great consequences. Re-read the verses from Ezekiel and you will see that God said that Israel’s blood would be on Ezekiel’s hands if he didn’t warn the righteous person not to sin. The role of being a prophet in the church (beyond the Spirit-given gift of prophecy) requires that we are active and respond to God’s prompting immediately. (If you want to see what a reluctant prophet looks like, read Jonah).

James’s final words complete a shift from the temple being the center of the Jewish believer’s religious life to the church being the focal point for them. James wants them to know that as they live away from Jerusalem in the diaspora (James 1:1) the community of the church and the elders (James 5:14) is now their home fulfilling every function once held by the temple, the priests, and the prophets.

And we — those of us who are not Jewish believers persecuted and driven away from Jerusalem and the temple — are part of this church as well. James’s words should encourage us to turn our eyes to the Father and wait on his wisdom while we live in homes that are not our eternal homes. And while we wait, we are to fulfill those roles God has prepared for us as members of the body of Christ, the church. For someday this body will be reunited with Christ and, regardless of the troubles through which we have lived, we will want Christ to find us pure and walking steadfastly in our faith.