The Berean Table

Field	Detail
Pericope	James 5:13–20
Theme	In suffering, sickness, sin, and straying, the church prays in the name of the Lord who hears, heals, forgives, and restores.

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Opening Prayer

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Closing Prayer

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Timeline Context

The book. The letter of James was written by James the Lord’s brother, the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 12:17; 15:13; Galatians 2:9), who was martyred in AD 62 and whom the second-century writer Hegesippus remembered as a man so constantly on his knees in prayer that they grew hard like a camel’s. He writes “to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (James 1:1), Jewish Christians scattered from Judea, most plausibly in the years around AD 44–49 after the persecution described in Acts 11:19, though a date in the late 50s is also held. Either way, this is among the earliest Christian writings we possess, and it breathes the air of the Sermon on the Mount. Its churches are led by “elders” (presbyteroi, v. 14; Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2), the pattern inherited from the synagogue and confirmed by the apostles. The letter is not a sustained argument like Romans but a chain of wisdom exhortations bound together by recurring concerns: trials and endurance (1:2–18; 5:7–11), the tongue (1:19–27; 3:1–12; 4:11–12; 5:12), a faith that acts (2:14–26), the double-minded heart (1:8; 4:8), and the poor and the rich (1:9–11; 2:1–13; 5:1–6).

The chapter. James 5 falls into three movements. Verses 1–6 are a prophetic denunciation of the rich who hoard, defraud, and condemn the righteous; verses 7–12 turn to the believers with a call to patient endurance “until the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7), modelled on the farmer, the prophets, and Job, and closing with the demand for honest, oath-free speech (James 5:12); and verses 13–20 close the letter. The move from 5:12 to 5:13 is a move from the wrong use of the tongue to its right use. Having forbidden the oath, James now fills the mouth with prayer, praise, and confession.

The pericope. Our passage is the letter’s ending, and it ends without any epistolary farewell. There is no greeting, no benediction, no “grace be with you.” The closest analogy is 1 John, which likewise stops rather than signs off. What James gives instead is a compact pastoral programme built around prayer in every circumstance: the individual’s prayer in suffering and song in joy (v. 13), the elders’ prayer over the sick (vv. 14–15), the congregation’s mutual confession and intercession (v. 16), the encouraging example of Elijah (vv. 17–18), and the restoration of the wanderer (vv. 19–20). Read in sequence, the unit widens from the private to the corporate and then narrows to a single lost brother. It gathers up the letter’s themes. The “suffering” of v. 13 echoes the suffering prophets of 5:10; the “prayer of faith” of v. 15 recalls the demand for undoubting faith in 1:5–8 and the diagnosis of prayerlessness in 4:2–3; the “righteous person” of v. 16 answers to the “righteous person” murdered by the rich in 5:6; the wanderer of v. 19 is the double-minded man of 1:8 and 4:8, and “death” in v. 20 is the death that sin brings forth in 1:15. The ending is therefore not an appendix but a destination. Everything James has said about faith and works, speech and patience, is meant to produce a praying, confessing, restoring community.

Redemptive-historical placement. The passage stands in the first generation after Pentecost, when the risen Christ, having poured out the Spirit, governs his church through the Word, prayer, and ordinary officers. The age of the apostles still overlaps the age of the elders; healing is sought not at a shrine but in the gathered church, “in the name of the Lord” (v. 14), the name which Peter had already invoked at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:6, 16). The story of Elijah, drawn from the era of the divided kingdom (1 Kings 17–18), is set before Christians as their own story, because the God who shut and opened heaven at a prophet’s word is the God who now hears the prayers of his people in Christ.

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Historical-Grammatical Study

Genre. The pericope is a closing paraenesis, a string of pastoral exhortations in the diatribe manner, with rhetorical questions answered by imperatives (vv. 13–14), a general maxim (v. 16b), a scriptural example (vv. 17–18), and a concluding case (vv. 19–20). It is not a farewell, and it is not a liturgical rubric; it is wisdom instruction about the practice of prayer in the community. The book as a whole is a wisdom epistle in the tradition of Proverbs and Sirach, set in the form of a circular letter.

Key grammatical and syntactical elements.

• Kakopathei (v. 13, “is suffering”) is the verb of the cognate noun in 5:10, where the prophets are held up as an “example of suffering and patience.” The suffering is broad, any hardship or ill-treatment, and is not restricted to sickness. Euthymei (“is cheerful”) is the word Paul uses when he tells the storm-tossed sailors to “take heart” (Acts 27:22, 25). Psalletō (“let him sing praise”) originally meant to pluck a stringed instrument and came to mean singing psalms or spiritual songs to God (Romans 15:9; 1 Corinthians 14:15; Ephesians 5:19). All three verbs are present imperatives: keep praying, keep singing.
• Asthenei (v. 14, “is sick”) means to be weak and can describe spiritual or moral weakness (Romans 14:1), but the parallel term ton kamnonta in v. 15 (literally “the weary one,” used of the physically sick) and the promise that the Lord “will raise him up” (egerei, the verb used when Jesus lifts Peter’s mother-in-law from her sickbed, Mark 1:31) make bodily illness the primary sense.
• Tous presbyterous tēs ekklēsias (v. 14, “the elders of the church”) is the first use of the phrase in the New Testament in its settled sense: a plurality of recognized office-bearers in a local congregation (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Titus 1:5; 1 Peter 5:1).
• Aleipsantes elaiō (v. 14, “anointing with oil”) uses aleiphō, the ordinary verb for rubbing or smearing with oil, rather than chriō, the word for ceremonial or messianic anointing. The aorist participle may be coincident with or slightly prior to the praying: “having anointed him, let them pray,” or “let them pray, anointing him.” The oil is subordinate to the prayer. En tō onomati tou kyriou (“in the name of the Lord”) specifies the authority and the source of any healing.
• Hē euchē tēs pisteōs (v. 15, “the prayer of faith”) is a genitive of quality: prayer characterized by faith, the same faith James demanded in 1:6. Sōsei (“will save”) is used here of bodily deliverance, as in the Gospels’ healing stories (Mark 5:34; 6:56). The conditional kan hamartias ē pepoiēkōs (“and if he has committed sins,” perfect periphrastic) leaves the link between sickness and sin open: it may be present, it need not be.
• Exomologeisthe (v. 16, “confess”) is a present imperative, a continuing practice, and allēlois (“to one another”) is reciprocal. Iathēte (“that you may be healed”) is aorist passive subjunctive of iaomai, a word used both of bodily cures and of spiritual restoration (Isaiah 53:5 LXX; 1 Peter 2:24; Hebrews 12:13).
• Poly ischyei deēsis dikaiou energoumenē (v. 16b) is the passage’s hinge maxim. Ischyei means “is strong, prevails”; deēsis is petition; dikaiou is the righteous person; and energoumenē is a present participle that may be read as middle (“as it is working,” effective in its exercise) or passive (“when it is energized,” that is, by God). Either way the stress is on prayer in action, not prayer in theory.
• Homoiopathēs (v. 17, “with a nature like ours”) is the word Paul and Barnabas use at Lystra: “We also are men, of like nature with you” (Acts 14:15). Proseuchē prosēuxato (“he prayed fervently”) is literally “he prayed with prayer,” a Hebraism of intensity of the kind found in Luke 22:15 (“I have earnestly desired,” literally “with desire I have desired”).
• Planēthē apo tēs alētheias (v. 19, “wanders from the truth”) uses the verb from which “planet” derives, a straying like a sheep gone astray (Matthew 18:12; 1 Peter 2:25); James has already warned, “Do not be deceived” (mē planasthe, James 1:16). Epistrepsē (“brings him back,” vv. 19–20) is the ordinary word for turning or converting (Luke 22:32; Acts 3:19). Kalypsei plēthos hamartiōn (“will cover a multitude of sins,” v. 20) reproduces Proverbs 10:12 in the form also used by 1 Peter 4:8.

First-century Jewish background. Oil was the common medicine of the ancient world, poured on wounds (Isaiah 1:6; Luke 10:34) and rubbed on the sick; the Twelve “anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13). Oil also symbolized gladness, honour, and consecration (Psalm 23:5; 45:7). Confession of sin was written into Israel’s law (Leviticus 5:5; Numbers 5:7) and liturgy (Psalm 32:5; Daniel 9:4–19). Elders governed synagogue communities, and the sick were visited and prayed over as a work of mercy. Elijah was revered in Second Temple Judaism as the prophet who “shut up the heavens” (Sirach 48:3) and who would return before the day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5–6). The “three years and six months” (v. 17) is the traditional reckoning of the drought also cited by Jesus (Luke 4:25); 1 Kings 18:1 says rain came “in the third year,” which fits if the years are counted from Elijah’s arrival at Zarephath or if the reckoning is inclusive.

Covenantal themes and patterns. Rain in Israel was a covenant matter. God promised rain for obedience and a shut heaven for apostasy (Deuteronomy 11:13–17; 28:23–24), and Solomon prayed at the temple’s dedication that “when heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin,” God would “hear in heaven and forgive” and “grant rain upon your land” (1 Kings 8:35–36). Elijah’s drought and its ending are that prayer being answered on Mount Carmel. James sets the pattern of sin, shut heaven, confession, prayer, forgiveness, and rain alongside his own pattern of sickness, prayer, confession, forgiveness, and healing. Behind both stands the shepherd-God of Ezekiel 34 who strengthens the weak, heals the sick, binds up the injured, and brings back the strayed (Ezekiel 34:4, 16), and who has now come in person as the Good Shepherd (John 10:11) and delegated his under-shepherds, the elders, to do the same (1 Peter 5:1–4).

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Expanded Outline

Section 1 — Prayer in Suffering, Song in Joy (James 5:13)

Key Insight

James opens his closing exhortation with two rhetorical questions and two commands: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise” (v. 13). The style is the diatribe he has used throughout the letter, a question thrown to the assembly and answered before anyone can reply. The effect is to leave no one out. Every member of the congregation is either in hardship or in gladness, and for each condition there is a Godward response.

The word for suffering (kakopathei) is the verb of the noun James used only three verses earlier when he held up the prophets as “an example of suffering and patience” (James 5:10). It is not a narrow term for illness (that comes in v. 14) but a broad one for hardship of any kind: persecution, poverty, injustice, grief, the trials of 1:2. The instruction is simply, “Let him pray.” The present imperative means keep on praying. James does not say pray for deliverance, or pray for patience, but pray, because the first thing suffering must do is drive us to God rather than away from him (Psalm 50:15). Cheerful (euthymei) is the word Paul used on the sinking ship, “take heart” (Acts 27:22, 25), and it describes a heart in good spirits regardless of circumstances. The command is to “sing praise” (psalletō), a word that came to mean singing psalms and spiritual songs to God (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). Joy, too, must be turned Godward, lest it become self-congratulation.

Calvin observes that there is no time in which God does not invite us to himself: afflictions ought to stimulate us to pray, and prosperity supplies an occasion to praise. This is the wisdom of the Psalter, where lament (“How long, O LORD?” Psalm 13:1) and praise (“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing,” Psalm 30:11) are both addressed to the same God, and it is why the church has always sung the Psalms. The verse also completes James’s teaching on the tongue. Having warned that the tongue is “a restless evil” (James 3:8) and forbidden the oath (James 5:12), he now shows what the tongue is for: prayer and praise. The mouth that must not swear must speak to God.

The Christological centre of this verse is the Lord Jesus himself, who “in the days of his flesh … offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7) and who, on the night he was betrayed, “sung a hymn” (Matthew 26:30), the Passover Hallel, before walking to Gethsemane. He suffered and prayed; he rejoiced and sang. In him the two halves of v. 13 meet, and through him our stammering prayers and our imperfect songs are received by the Father (Hebrews 13:15).

Application

The first application is to make prayer the reflex of hardship. Most of us respond to suffering by complaint, by analysis, or by silent endurance; James teaches us to respond by speaking to God. That does not mean suppressing what we feel. The Psalms James’s readers sang are full of honest anguish, and Jesus himself prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). It means taking the anguish to the right address. A believer who is sick, bereaved, unemployed, or slandered should ask, before anything else, whether she has yet said so to God.

The second application is to make praise the reflex of gladness. When work goes well, when a child comes home, when health returns, the temptation is to credit ourselves or to enjoy the gift without a thought for the Giver. James commands us to sing. The practice of singing psalms and hymns in private, and not only in public worship, is a discipline that keeps joy from becoming pride and trains the heart to trace every good gift to “the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

The third application is corporate. A congregation should be a place where both the suffering and the cheerful have a voice, where the lament of the afflicted is not drowned out by the exuberance of the comfortable, and where the songs of the glad are not silenced by the grief of the sorrowful (Romans 12:15). Paul and Silas, bleeding in a Philippian jail, were “praying and singing hymns to God” (Acts 16:25); suffering and song are not enemies.

A warning against misapplication: this verse does not teach that the suffering may only pray and the cheerful may only sing, as though sorrow excluded praise or joy excluded petition. Nor does it endorse a stoic cheerfulness that denies real pain or a pious gloom that suspects all gladness. James is describing the whole of life turned toward God, not assigning moods their permitted vocabulary. The believer who is suffering will often find that prayer becomes song, and the cheerful believer who sings will find that praise gives way to intercession for those who cannot yet sing.

Section 2 — Call for the Elders (James 5:14)

Key Insight

The third question raises the stakes: “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” (v. 14). The verb sick (asthenei) means to be weak, and elsewhere it can describe weakness of conscience or faith (Romans 14:1). Here, however, the companion word in v. 15, “the one who is sick” (ton kamnonta, literally the weary or worn-out one), and the promise that “the Lord will raise him up,” point to a bodily illness serious enough to keep a person in bed. The sick person cannot come to the assembly; the church must come to him.

Three features of the command deserve notice. First, the initiative lies with the sick person: “let him call.” The elders are not to be presumed upon, nor is illness to be hidden. Second, the persons called are “the elders of the church” (tous presbyterous tēs ekklēsias). This is the earliest reference to a settled plurality of elders in a local congregation, established by the apostles in every church (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5) and charged by Peter to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:2). James sends the sick not to a wonder-worker but to the ordinary shepherds of the flock. Third, the elders are to “pray over him” (ep’ auton), the preposition picturing them standing over the bedridden believer.

The anointing with oil has been much debated. The verb is aleiphō, the everyday word for rubbing on oil, not chriō, the word for ceremonial anointing. Oil was the common medicine of the ancient world, poured into wounds by the Samaritan (Luke 10:34) and used by the Twelve when they “anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13). The best reading holds these together: the elders bring the ordinary means of care and, by prayer, set the sick person apart for the Lord’s attention. What the oil is not is a sacrament. Calvin argued that the practice belonged to the gifts of healing that marked the apostolic age, and that Rome’s “extreme unction” was a counterfeit that turned a sign of healing into a preparation for death. Whether or not one follows Calvin, the Reformed churches refuse to make it a sacrament, for Christ instituted two only.

The decisive phrase is “in the name of the Lord.” The elders act as agents of Christ, under his authority and appealing to his power, as Peter said, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). The oil does not heal; the elders do not heal; “the Lord will raise him up” (v. 15). The verse thus fulfils Ezekiel’s indictment of Israel’s false shepherds, who left the sick unhealed (Ezekiel 34:4), and the promise of the true Shepherd who said, “I will strengthen the weak” (Ezekiel 34:16), now delegated to his under-shepherds.

Application

The first application concerns the sick. James places the responsibility on the sufferer: “let him call.” Many believers endure serious illness in private, out of a wish not to trouble anyone or a reticence that is really pride. James commands the opposite. When you are seriously ill, ask for the elders. It is not presumptuous; it is obedience. And ask for them as elders, not merely as friends, that is, for prayer in Christ’s name, not only for company.

The second application concerns elders. The office is a shepherding office, and shepherds go to the sick sheep. Session meetings, doctrinal oversight, and pulpit supply matter, but the elder who never sits by a hospital bed and prays over a suffering member has not yet done the work of v. 14. Elders should make visiting the seriously ill a fixed part of their ministry and should be willing, where it is asked and edifying, to anoint with oil as a sign that the sick person is being committed to the Lord’s care (Mark 6:13). They should pray boldly, in the name of the Lord, for actual healing, and not only for “comfort.”

The third application concerns the whole congregation. The church should know who its elders are, should honour the office (1 Timothy 5:17), and should create a culture in which calling for the elders is normal rather than alarming. A church that hides its sick from its shepherds, or whose shepherds are strangers to its sick, is not yet the community James envisions, in which weakness is met with prayer rather than left alone.

A warning against misapplication: the anointing with oil is not a sacrament, does not confer grace by its performance, and is not a rite of preparation for death. It has no efficacy apart from the prayer it accompanies, and the prayer has no efficacy apart from the Lord in whose name it is offered. Nor does this verse license a ministry of professional “healers” separate from the church’s ordinary elders, or a sick person’s demand that God must heal because the ritual was done. The verse sends us to our shepherds and, through them, to Christ; it does not send us to a technique.

Section 3 — The Prayer of Faith and the Lord Who Raises Up (James 5:15)

Key Insight

Verse 15 states the promise attached to the elders’ ministry: “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.”

“The prayer of faith” (hē euchē tēs pisteōs) is prayer characterised by faith, the faith James has described from the beginning: “let him ask in faith, with no doubting” (James 1:6). It is the elders’ prayer, and the faith in view is trust in God’s power and goodness rather than a confident prediction of the outcome. Spurgeon distinguished the prayer of faith from the prayer of presumption: it holds God to his promises, not to our preferences.

“Will save the one who is sick” (sōsei ton kamnonta) uses sōzō in its physical sense, as in the Gospels’ healing narratives: “your faith has made you well” (literally, “has saved you,” Mark 5:34). “The Lord will raise him up” (egerei) is likewise the language of the Gospels, where Jesus takes Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand and “lifted her up” (Mark 1:31). The agent is not the oil, not the elders, not even the prayer, but the Lord. The prayer is the means; the Lord is the healer.

“And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” treats sickness and sin with precision. The conditional “if” (kan) allows that sickness may be connected with particular sin, as it sometimes is (1 Corinthians 11:30; Psalm 32:3–4), while refusing to make it so always, in agreement with Jesus’ word, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents” (John 9:3). The passive “he will be forgiven” is divine: God forgives, not the elders, and the sickroom becomes a place of pardon.

Read as a guarantee of recovery, it collides with Scripture and with experience. Paul left Trophimus ill at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20), and his own thorn was not removed but answered with, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Reformed reading takes v. 15 as a general promise, expressed in the confident manner of proverbial wisdom, governed by the rule that “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14). God does heal in answer to his church’s prayer, and elders should expect it; but he heals according to his will, and the prayer of faith includes submission to that will (Matthew 26:39). Matthew Henry notes that the promise is to be understood with the usual reservation, that healing be for the glory of God and the good of the sick.

Finally, the verse reaches beyond the sickbed. “Raise him up” is the verb of resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:15). Every believer prayed over in faith will be raised, if not from this illness then on the last day, by the Lord who is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), who has authority both to heal and to forgive (Mark 2:9–11), and by whose wounds we are healed (1 Peter 2:24).

Application

The first application is to pray for healing with real expectation. Reformed Christians, wary of the excesses of healing movements, sometimes pray for the sick so hedged with qualifications that no one, least of all God, could mistake the prayer for a request. James will not allow this. The prayer of faith asks the Lord to raise the sick person up, and asks without doubting (James 1:6). Elders should pray for recovery in plain words, and congregations should expect that God answers such prayers, because he does.

The second application is to pray with submission. Faith is not the power to compel God but the confidence to trust him. The same Lord who healed Peter’s mother-in-law left Paul with his thorn, and said in both cases something true about his grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). To pray “your will be done” is not a loophole but the very shape of the prayer of faith, since it rests the outcome on God’s wisdom rather than on our diagnosis of what is best. Where healing does not come, neither the sick person nor the elders should conclude that faith was lacking.

The third application is to let sickness search the conscience without becoming morbid. James’s “if” keeps two ditches in view. On one side is the assumption that illness is always punishment, which crushes the sufferer and slanders God. On the other is the refusal ever to ask whether sin might be involved, which wastes an occasion for repentance. The sick believer should ask honestly whether there is sin to confess, and, whether or not there is, should hear the good news of the verse: “he will be forgiven.”

A crucial warning against misapplication: this verse does not teach that healing is guaranteed to anyone who prays with enough faith, and it must never be used to blame the sick or their elders for a lack of faith when healing does not come. Such teaching has wounded many. Nor does it teach that all sickness is caused by sin, or that forgiveness is dispensed by the elders. The Lord raises up; the Lord forgives; and he does both according to his will and for his glory, which sometimes means healing now and always means resurrection then.

Section 4 — Confess to One Another, Pray for One Another (James 5:16)

Key Insight

Verse 16 draws the inference: “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.” The “therefore” (oun) ties the general practice of the congregation to the particular case of the sick. If the elders’ prayer brings healing and forgiveness to the bedridden, the whole church should live in a habit of confession and intercession.

“Confess your sins to one another” (exomologeisthe allēlois tas hamartias) is a present imperative, an ongoing practice, and it is reciprocal. It is not confession to a priest; the “one another” makes every believer both confessor and hearer. Calvin comments that James’s words have nothing to do with auricular confession before a priest; he bids us confess to one another and pray for one another. This mutual confession has deep roots: Israel was commanded to confess sin (Leviticus 5:5; Numbers 5:7), the psalmist found that concealment brought wasting and confession brought pardon (Psalm 32:3–5), and Proverbs promises that “he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). Confession is made to God (1 John 1:9) and, where a brother has been wronged, to the brother (Matthew 18:15); James adds that sins should be spoken to fellow believers so that they may pray for us.

“That you may be healed” (iathēte) extends the healing of v. 15 in two directions. The verb is used of bodily cures (Matthew 8:8) and of spiritual restoration, “with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24; Hebrews 12:13), and James likely intends both: the sick body and the wounded conscience are healed by the same Lord.

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” is the maxim on which the passage turns. The righteous person (dikaios) is not the sinless person, as v. 17 will make plain, but the one who is right with God through faith and walks uprightly, the one of whom the Psalter says, “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry” (Psalm 34:15), and Proverbs, “he hears the prayer of the righteous” (Proverbs 15:29). Righteousness does not earn a hearing; it describes the person whose life is not at war with his prayers (Psalm 66:18). “Has great power” (poly ischyei) means prevails much. “As it is working” (energoumenē) may be middle, prayer effective in its exercise, or passive, prayer energised by God; on either reading the accent falls on prayer actually offered. As Matthew Henry puts it, the prayer of the righteous has no power in itself, but it prevails with God.

Behind every righteous intercessor stands the Righteous One, “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1), who “always lives to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25) and whose prayer the Father always hears (John 11:42). He had no sins to confess, yet he bore ours; his prayer has infinite power, and it is in his name that ours is heard.

Application

The first application is to practise confession as a habit, not an emergency measure. James’s present tense describes a way of life. Most congregations have no such practice; sins are confessed, if at all, in the general confession of the liturgy and in private to God. James asks for more: a fellowship in which believers say to trusted brothers or sisters, “I have sinned in this way; pray for me.” This requires wisdom about whom to tell and how much, but it does not permit a life in which no other Christian knows our besetting sins.

The second application is to receive confession well. The “one another” makes every believer a hearer of confession, and hearers must be safe. That means keeping confidences, refusing to gossip, and answering confession with prayer and the gospel rather than with shock or lecture (Galatians 6:1–2). A church in which confession is met with condemnation will soon have no confession.

The third application is to take up intercession as a real work. If “the prayer of a righteous person has great power,” then the ordinary Christian’s prayer for a sick neighbour or a struggling friend is not a small thing. Epaphras was “always struggling” in prayer for the Colossians (Colossians 4:12); Samuel counted it sin to cease praying for Israel (1 Samuel 12:23). To be righteous in James’s sense is also to keep short accounts with God, so that regarded iniquity does not stop our prayers (Psalm 66:18).

A warning against misapplication: mutual confession is not a return to the confessional. No believer holds the keys to another’s forgiveness, and no one is required to confess every sin to everyone; confession is to God first, to the wronged party where there is one, and to trusted believers for prayer. Nor does “the prayer of a righteous person” mean that only exceptionally holy people are heard; the righteous are those justified by faith, as Elijah, with all his failures, will show. Finally, “great power” belongs to prayer because God answers it, not because the pray-er commands him.

Section 5 — Elijah, a Man with a Nature Like Ours (James 5:17–18)

Key Insight

To prove his maxim, James turns to the most famous intercessor of the divided kingdom: “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” (vv. 17–18).

The first thing James says about Elijah is not that he was great but that he was like us: homoiopathēs, the word Paul and Barnabas used at Lystra, “We also are men, of like nature with you” (Acts 14:15). Jewish memory had elevated Elijah almost beyond humanity, the prophet who “shut up the heavens” (Sirach 48:3) and would return before the day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5); James brings him down to earth. This is the Elijah who fled from Jezebel and prayed under the broom tree, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life” (1 Kings 19:4). He was fearful and depressed, and his prayer prevailed. Calvin remarks that James mentions Elijah’s frailty lest we think the prayers of the saints beyond our reach.

“He prayed fervently” is literally “he prayed with prayer” (proseuchē prosēuxato), a Hebrew idiom of intensity. 1 Kings 17:1 records no prayer for drought, only Elijah’s announcement, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand”; James reads that standing as the posture of the intercessor, and Elijah’s word to Ahab was the fruit of his prayer. On Carmel he “put his face between his knees” and sent his servant seven times to look toward the sea (1 Kings 18:42–44).

“Three years and six months” is the traditional reckoning, cited also by Jesus (Luke 4:25); 1 Kings 18:1 has rain “in the third year,” probably counted from Elijah’s arrival at Zarephath. The number became the apocalyptic figure for a limited season of judgment (Daniel 7:25; Revelation 11:6).

The drought was not arbitrary. Rain was a covenant sanction: God had promised to “shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain” if Israel turned to other gods (Deuteronomy 11:17), and Solomon had prayed that when this happened and the people “turn from their sin,” God would “hear in heaven and forgive” and “grant rain” (1 Kings 8:35–36). Elijah’s two prayers ask God to keep his covenant word in both its threat and its mercy, and the rain came after Israel confessed, “The LORD, he is God” (1 Kings 18:39). Sin shut heaven; confession and prayer opened it, precisely the sequence of vv. 15–16.

Christ is the greater Elijah. John came “in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17) to prepare his way, and at Jesus’ baptism the heavens were “torn open” (Mark 1:10). By his prayer and his cross he has opened heaven for good, and the rain that followed is the Spirit, poured out at Pentecost (Joel 2:23, 28; Acts 2:33) so that his people bear fruit (Galatians 5:22).

Application

The first application is to stop excusing our prayerlessness by our ordinariness. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.” The excuse that great answers to prayer belong to great saints is exactly the one James removes. The believer who is timid, discouraged, or conscious of past failures is in the same condition as Elijah under the broom tree, and Elijah under the broom tree was heard. What made his prayer prevail was not his temperament but his God.

The second application is to pray fervently. “He prayed with prayer.” Elijah on Carmel, face between his knees, sending his servant back to the horizon seven times, is a picture of persistence that Jesus commended in the parable of the widow, that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). Much of our praying is casual. The fervency James commends is not volume or emotion but earnestness that keeps asking.

The third application is to pray according to God’s Word. Elijah did not invent the drought; he prayed the covenant curse of Deuteronomy 11:17, and then prayed the covenant mercy of 1 Kings 8:36. His confidence came from praying what God had promised. Our prayers gain the same confidence when they are shaped by Scripture, asking for what God has said he will give: wisdom (James 1:5), forgiveness (1 John 1:9), the Spirit (Luke 11:13), and the growth of his kingdom (Matthew 6:10).

A warning against misapplication: Elijah’s example does not authorise us to call down judgments, control the weather, or treat prayer as a means of bending God to our purposes. Elijah prayed as a prophet with a specific word from God for a specific covenant crisis, and even his prayer waited on God’s timing: “in the third year” the Lord said, “I will send rain” (1 Kings 18:1). The passage teaches the power of a righteous person’s prayer, not the power of a person over God. Nor does “a nature like ours” mean that we may expect the extraordinary signs of a prophet; it means that the God who heard a weak prophet hears weak believers.

Section 6 — Bringing Back the Wanderer (James 5:19–20)

Key Insight

James ends not with a farewell but with a rescue: “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” (vv. 19–20). The tender “my brothers” returns for the last time.

“Wanders from the truth” (planēthē apo tēs alētheias) describes a believer, “among you,” who strays. The verb is the one used of a sheep gone astray (Matthew 18:12; 1 Peter 2:25) and of deception (James 1:16, “Do not be deceived”). “The truth” in James is the gospel and its way of life: God “brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18), and the double-minded who boast are “false to the truth” (James 3:14). Wandering may be doctrinal or moral, and in James it is usually both (James 2:17). The wanderer is the double-minded man of 1:8 and 4:8 in his final stage, the one in whom desire has conceived sin and sin is bringing forth death (James 1:15).

“Someone brings him back” (epistrepsē) is the ordinary word for turning or converting (Acts 3:19), the word Jesus used to Peter, “when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). The “someone” is any believer who goes after the strayed, the task James has been performing throughout the letter and now hands on.

“Let him know” assures the restorer. “Will save his soul from death” most naturally refers to the wanderer’s soul (psychēn autou) and to eternal death, the death that sin “brings forth” when it is fully grown (James 1:15). James describes not a believer losing salvation but a sinner rescued from the road that ends in death. “Will cover a multitude of sins” quotes the sense of Proverbs 10:12, “love covers all offenses,” as 1 Peter 4:8 does, and echoes Psalm 32:1. The sins covered are the wanderer’s, forgiven by God when he returns. Matthew Henry observes that the restorer is not said to procure forgiveness but to be the instrument through whom God’s covering mercy reaches the sinner.

The verses complete the shepherd pattern of Ezekiel 34. God indicted Israel’s shepherds because “the strayed you have not brought back” (Ezekiel 34:4) and promised, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed” (Ezekiel 34:16). Jesus fulfilled that promise as the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to seek the one (Luke 15:4–7) and who declared, “it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:14). He restored Peter after his denial (John 21:15–17), having prayed for him beforehand (Luke 22:32). Every Christian who brings back a wanderer is participating in the Shepherd’s own work, and every sin covered is covered by the Shepherd’s blood.

That James ends here, without a benediction, is itself a message: the letter’s last word is a commission to keep bringing back.

Application

The first application is to go after wanderers. Most churches have members who have drifted: a young adult who stopped attending, a family that quietly left over a grievance, a believer whose life has slid into open sin. The instinct is to let them go, out of respect for their choice or fear of confrontation. James expects “someone” to go. That someone may be you. Jesus’ instruction is concrete: “go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matthew 18:15).

The second application is to go gently and humbly. Restoration is the work of “you who are spiritual,” done “in a spirit of gentleness,” with the reminder, “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). The restorer is a sinner seeking a sinner, not a judge summoning a defendant. He goes with the gospel, not a verdict, and with patience, since wanderers rarely return at the first word.

The third application is to value the work rightly. James says the restorer “will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” No achievement in Christian life is greater. The believer who thinks his gifts are small should consider that one conversation, one visit, one persistent prayer for a straying friend may be the means by which God saves a soul. There is “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7), and the restorer shares it.

A warning against misapplication: bringing back a wanderer is not policing the church for the impure, and it does not license harshness, gossip about the wanderer’s sins, or a spirit of superiority. Nor does “save his soul from death” teach that true believers can finally be lost, or that human restorers rather than God save souls; God saves, through means, and those he has begun to save he completes (Philippians 1:6). At the same time, the doctrine of perseverance must never become a reason to leave a wanderer alone. God keeps his people through the pursuit of their brothers and sisters, and no one may presume on a perseverance he refuses to pursue.

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Cross References

Comparative Gospel Study

Not Applicable as Direct Comparison — James is a New Testament wisdom epistle, not Gospel narrative. However, James 5:13–20 anticipates key Gospel themes:

• Anointing the sick with oil in Jesus’ name. When Jesus sent out the Twelve, “they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13). James’s elders continue that apostolic practice under the same authority, “in the name of the Lord” (v. 14), and the Samaritan’s “pouring on oil and wine” (Luke 10:34) shows the ordinary medicinal use the sign presupposes.

• Healing and forgiveness together. Jesus asked, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?” (Mark 2:9), and proved his authority to forgive by healing. James’s “the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (v. 15) presumes the same Lord with the same double authority.

• Sickness not always the fruit of sin. Of the man born blind Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents” (John 9:3). James’s conditional “if he has committed sins” (v. 15) preserves Jesus’ refusal to read every illness as judgment.

• Persistent, expectant prayer. Jesus taught that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1) and that the Father gives good things to those who ask (Matthew 7:7–11). Elijah praying “with prayer” and sending his servant seven times (vv. 17–18; 1 Kings 18:43) is the Old Testament picture of that persistence.

• Elijah’s drought. Jesus himself cited the same reckoning, “when the heavens were shut up three years and six months” (Luke 4:25), and identified John as the Elijah who was to come (Matthew 11:14). James’s “three years and six months” (v. 17) stands in the same tradition.

• Restoring the straying brother. The wanderer of v. 19 is the sheep that “has gone astray” whom the shepherd seeks (Matthew 18:12–14), and the restorer follows Jesus’ instruction, “go and tell him his fault … If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matthew 18:15). Jesus’ own restoration of Peter (Luke 22:32; John 21:15–17) is the model.

Old Testament Connections

Pentateuch. Rain and drought are covenant sanctions: obedience brings “the rain for your land in its season” and apostasy causes God to “shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain” (Deuteronomy 11:13–17; 28:23–24), the background to Elijah’s two prayers (vv. 17–18). Confession of sin is commanded in the law: “he shall confess the sin he has committed” (Leviticus 5:5; Numbers 5:7), anticipating “confess your sins to one another” (v. 16). The covering of sin by blood on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:30) underlies “cover a multitude of sins” (v. 20). Moses’ intercession for Israel (Exodus 32:11–14) is an early instance of a righteous person’s prevailing prayer.

Historical Books. Elijah’s story (1 Kings 17–18) supplies James’s example: the announcement of drought (1 Kings 17:1), the provision at Cherith and Zarephath (1 Kings 17:2–24), the confrontation on Carmel where the people confess “The LORD, he is God” (1 Kings 18:39), and the prayer for rain with face between the knees (1 Kings 18:42–45). Elijah’s despair under the broom tree (1 Kings 19:4) shows the “nature like ours” (v. 17). Solomon’s temple prayer, that when heaven is shut because of sin the people’s confession and prayer be heard and rain given (1 Kings 8:35–36), is the covenant liturgy James’s sequence follows. Hezekiah’s sickness, prayer, and healing (2 Kings 20:1–7; Isaiah 38) illustrate the Lord raising up the sick in answer to prayer.

Wisdom Literature. “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses” (Proverbs 10:12) is the source of v. 20. “The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous” (Proverbs 15:29) and “he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13) supply vv. 16. Psalm 32 gives the whole passage’s logic: silence brings wasting bones, confession brings forgiveness, and the blessed one is he “whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1–5). Psalm 34:15, “The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry,” and Psalm 66:18, on cherished iniquity blocking prayer, define the righteous person of v. 16. Psalm 50:15, Psalm 13, and Psalm 30 model prayer in trouble and song in deliverance (v. 13). Psalm 103:3 unites forgiveness and healing, “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” Job’s friends warn against reading all suffering as punishment (Job 42:7), and Job’s prayer for them shows a righteous man’s intercession accepted (Job 42:8–10).

Major Prophets. Isaiah 53:5, “with his wounds we are healed,” lies behind “that you may be healed” (v. 16) and the atonement that covers sin. Isaiah 1:6 pictures wounds not “softened with oil,” the medicinal background to v. 14. Isaiah 44:3 and Ezekiel 36:25–27 describe the Spirit poured out like water, the fulfilment of Elijah’s rain. Ezekiel 34:4, 16 indicts shepherds who did not heal the sick or bring back the strayed and promises that God himself will, the pattern for elders (v. 14) and restorers (vv. 19–20). Ezekiel 3:18–21 and 33:7–9 charge the watchman to warn the wanderer. Daniel 9:4–19 is a model of confession and intercession.

Minor Prophets. Hosea 14:1–2 calls the straying nation to “return to the LORD” and to “take with you words,” the confession James commends, and Hosea 6:1 promises that “he has torn us, that he may heal us.” Joel 2:23 and 2:28 join the gift of rain with the outpouring of the Spirit. Malachi 4:5–6 promises the coming of Elijah before the day of the Lord, the expectation James’s readers carried and which Jesus applied to John (Matthew 11:14). Micah 7:18–19 celebrates the God who “pardons iniquity” and casts sins “into the depths of the sea,” the covering of v. 20. Jonah 3:5–10 shows a whole city’s repentance and God’s relenting.

New Testament Fulfillment

Gospels/Acts. Jesus prayed in suffering (Hebrews 5:7; Matthew 26:39) and sang in the upper room (Matthew 26:30), fulfilling v. 13. He raised up the sick (Mark 1:31; 5:41), forgave and healed together (Mark 2:9–11), and refused to equate illness with sin (John 9:3). He prayed for Peter’s restoration and commissioned him to strengthen the brothers (Luke 22:32), sought the strayed sheep (Luke 15:4–7), and taught the restoration of a sinning brother (Matthew 18:15–20). Acts shows the elders in place (Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2, 6; 20:17), Peter praying over Tabitha (Acts 9:40), Paul praying and laying hands on the sick (Acts 28:8), the church’s earnest prayer for Peter (Acts 12:5), Paul and Silas praying and singing in prison (Acts 16:25), and the phrase “of like nature with you” (Acts 14:15). At Pentecost Christ “poured out” the Spirit (Acts 2:33), the rain of the new covenant.

Paul’s Epistles. Paul’s thorn and the answer “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:7–9), together with Trophimus left ill (2 Timothy 4:20), Epaphroditus near death (Philippians 2:25–27), and Timothy’s ailments (1 Timothy 5:23), show that faithful prayer for healing is governed by God’s will. Galatians 6:1–2, “restore him in a spirit of gentleness,” is the manual for vv. 19–20. Romans 8:26–27, 34 grounds prevailing prayer in the intercession of the Spirit and the Son. Colossians 4:12 and 2 Corinthians 1:11 show intercession as labour. Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 command the singing of v. 13. Romans 12:15 governs rejoicing and weeping together. 1 Timothy 5:17 and Titus 1:5 describe the elders James presupposes. 1 Corinthians 11:30 confirms that sickness can be linked to sin, and 1 Corinthians 15:15 uses “raise up” for resurrection.

General Epistles/Revelation. Hebrews 7:25 and 4:14–16 present Christ as the righteous intercessor who always lives to plead for us; Hebrews 12:12–13 calls the lame to be “healed,” and Hebrews 3:13 and 10:24–25 command mutual exhortation. 1 Peter 4:8 quotes the same proverb as v. 20, 1 Peter 2:24–25 joins healing by Christ’s wounds with the return of straying sheep to “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls,” and 1 Peter 5:1–4 charges elders to shepherd. 1 John 5:14–16 gives the rule of prayer “according to his will” and the duty of praying for a sinning brother; 1 John 1:9 promises forgiveness to confession; 1 John 2:1–2 names Christ the righteous Advocate and propitiation; 1 John 2:19 explains those who wander and never return. Jude 22–23 commands saving others “by snatching them out of the fire.” Revelation 11:6 describes the two witnesses with Elijah’s “power to shut the sky,” and Revelation 21:4 promises the end of all sickness and death.

Redemptive-Historical Context

Creation. God made human beings to live in dependent communion with him, speaking to him and hearing from him, and set them in a world where rain fell and “the earth bore its fruit” (v. 18) at his word (Genesis 1:11–12; 2:5–6). Prayer and praise are the native speech of creatures made in his image, and health is the created order of a body designed to serve God. James’s questions, “Is anyone suffering? Is anyone cheerful? Is anyone sick?” presuppose a creation in which none of these conditions is final and all of them are meant to be brought before the Creator.

Fall. With sin came death (Genesis 2:17; Romans 5:12), and with death, sickness, suffering, and a heaven that could be shut. The covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 make drought, disease, and wandering the signs of a people estranged from God, and Elijah’s Israel, gone after Baal, lived under exactly that judgment. James’s letter knows this world well: sin “when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15), the tongue is set on fire by hell (James 3:6), and the double-minded wander from the truth (v. 19). The sickroom, the guilty conscience, and the straying brother are all the Fall’s work.

Redemption. Into this world God sent the promised Shepherd who would “seek the lost” and “bring back the strayed” (Ezekiel 34:16). Jesus healed the sick as signs of the kingdom, forgave sins with the same authority (Mark 2:9–11), and in his passion prayed with loud cries and tears and was heard (Hebrews 5:7). “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Risen and ascended, he opened heaven and poured out the Spirit as rain on a dry land (Acts 2:33; Isaiah 44:3), and he “always lives to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25). James’s passage lives entirely in this accomplished redemption. The elders pray “in the name of the Lord”; the Lord raises up and forgives; the righteous person’s prayer prevails because the Righteous One’s prayer has already prevailed; and the wanderer’s sins are covered because a multitude of sins was covered at the cross. The church, with its elders and its mutual confession, is the community of the redeemed in which these blessings are administered through ordinary means.

Consummation. Yet the passage is honest about the “not yet.” Not every sick believer is raised in this life; Paul’s thorn remained. Believers still wander; sins still need confessing; heaven’s rain still comes in measure. James’s readers are told to be patient “until the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7), and it is at that coming that the promise “the Lord will raise him up” (v. 15) will be kept for every believer without exception, when “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21:4). The already is real: God heals, forgives, and restores now, in answer to prayer, and the church has the Spirit as the first fruits of the harvest. The not yet is also real: every healing now is partial and every restoration provisional until the resurrection. Between the two, the church prays. The prayer of faith, the confession of sin, and the pursuit of the wanderer are the ordinary shape of new covenant life in the overlap of the ages, when the kingdom has come in Christ and is still coming. James ends his letter in that overlap, with no benediction, because the work of praying and restoring goes on until the Lord who raises up appears.

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Systematic Theology Connection

Prayer as a Means of Grace

James 5:13–20 is the New Testament’s most concentrated teaching on prayer as the church’s ordinary means of receiving God’s blessings. Prayer answers suffering (v. 13), brings healing and forgiveness to the sick (vv. 14–15), accompanies confession (v. 16), prevails as Elijah’s did (vv. 17–18), and undergirds the restoration of the wanderer (vv. 19–20). The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines prayer as “an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies” (WSC 98), and every element of that definition appears here: desires offered (v. 13), things agreeable to his will (1 John 5:14), the name of the Lord (v. 14), confession (v. 16), and thanksgiving in song (v. 13). The Confession teaches that prayer “is by God required of all men” and is to be made “in the name of the Son, by the help of his Spirit, according to his will” (WCF 21.3), and the Larger Catechism notes that we are to pray “for all sorts of men living” and for the church (WLC 183). Practically, this doctrine forbids the treatment of prayer as decoration. It is a means through which God actually gives what he has promised: wisdom (James 1:5), healing, pardon, and the return of the strayed. It also means that prayer has content and shape: it asks in faith (James 1:6), confesses sin, and submits to God’s will. The Reformed emphasis on means of grace guards against two errors, the mystical notion that God acts apart from means and the rationalist notion that means work by themselves. James holds both together: the elders pray and the Lord raises up. Cross-references: Matthew 7:7–11; Luke 18:1; John 15:7; Ephesians 6:18; Philippians 4:6; Hebrews 4:16.

The Providence of God

The passage assumes throughout that God governs sickness and health, drought and rain, wandering and return. “The Lord will raise him up” (v. 15); “heaven gave rain” (v. 18); the restorer “will save his soul from death” (v. 20) because God saves through him. The Westminster Confession teaches that God “doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things … by his most wise and holy providence” (WCF 5.1), and that he ordinarily works “by means,” yet “is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure” (WCF 5.3). This is exactly the frame in which the prayer of faith must be understood. God uses means, the elders, the oil, the prayers, the restorer, but the outcome is his. He may heal; he may, as with Paul’s thorn, give sufficient grace instead (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Reformed reading of v. 15 is not an evasion of the promise but an application of providence: God hears every prayer of faith and answers according to his will (1 John 5:14). The Larger Catechism reminds us that God’s providence extends to “the sins of angels and men,” which he “orders” for his own glory (WLC 19), so that even the wandering of a brother falls within his sovereign purpose and the means of his return are in his hand. Practically, this doctrine gives the sick believer peace and the elders boldness. They pray expecting God to act, and they rest when he acts otherwise than they asked. It also frees the restorer: he goes, speaks, and prays, but he does not carry the weight of the outcome. Elijah’s drought ended when God said, “I will send rain” (1 Kings 18:1), and the prophet’s fervent prayer was the means of a decree already made. Cross-references: Psalm 103:19; Psalm 115:3; Matthew 10:29–31; Romans 8:28; Ephesians 1:11; Job 42:2.

The Nature of the Church and Its Officers

James presupposes an organised church with recognised elders (v. 14), a fellowship practising mutual confession and intercession (v. 16), and a community responsible for its wanderers (vv. 19–20). This is the visible church of Reformed ecclesiology, “the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God” (WCF 25.2), to which Christ “hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God” (WCF 25.3), and which he governs through “church officers” (WCF 30.1). The plurality of elders in each congregation, established by the apostles (Acts 14:23) and charged to shepherd (1 Peter 5:1–4), is the pattern Presbyterian polity preserves, and v. 14 shows the office at its most pastoral: elders standing over a sickbed praying in the name of the Lord. The passage also defines what the church’s rites are not. The anointing with oil is not a sacrament; the Confession is explicit that “there be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, baptism, and the supper of the Lord” (WCF 27.4), and the Reformed churches accordingly reject extreme unction. Likewise, confession “to one another” is not sacramental confession to a priest; the Confession affirms that a believer who scandalises a brother or the church “ought to be willing, by a private or public confession” to declare his repentance (WCF 15.6), and that private confession to God is sufficient for pardon (WCF 15.6). The communion of saints, in which believers are “obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good” (WCF 26.1), is the theological ground of the whole passage. Practically, this doctrine calls congregations to honour and use their elders, to cultivate real fellowship in which sin can be confessed and prayer offered, and to regard the pursuit of wanderers as everyone’s task. Cross-references: Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9; Hebrews 13:17; Matthew 18:15–20; Galatians 6:1–2.

Repentance unto Life

The passage’s treatment of sin is a doctrine of repentance in miniature. Sin may lie behind sickness (v. 15), and where it does, it is to be forgiven; sins are to be confessed to one another (v. 16); the wanderer is to be brought back from his sin so that a multitude of sins may be covered (vv. 19–20). The Westminster Confession defines repentance unto life as “an evangelical grace” by which a sinner, “out of the sight and sense not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of his sins … so grieves for, and hates his sins, as to turn from them all unto God” (WCF 15.1–2), and it insists that repentance is “of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it” (WCF 15.3), while also affirming that “there is no sin so great, that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent” (WCF 15.4). James’s “if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (v. 15) and “will cover a multitude of sins” (v. 20) express that last clause: however great the multitude, forgiveness covers it. The Confession’s teaching on confession is drawn directly from this passage: every man is bound to confess his sins privately to God, and “he that scandalizeth his brother, or the church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended” (WCF 15.6). The Shorter Catechism’s definition, that repentance includes “grief and hatred of his sin” and a turning “unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavour after, new obedience” (WSC 87), describes the wanderer who is brought back. Practically, this doctrine keeps confession from becoming mere venting and restoration from becoming mere reattendance. The wanderer must turn; the confessor must forsake (Proverbs 28:13). And the doctrine keeps grace central: repentance is itself a gift of God (Acts 11:18), granted through the prayers and pursuit of the church. Cross-references: Psalm 32:1–5; Proverbs 28:13; Luke 15:7; Acts 3:19; 2 Corinthians 7:10; 1 John 1:9.

Perseverance of the Saints

Verses 19–20 raise the question of the wanderer’s final state, and the Reformed doctrine of perseverance answers it without dulling James’s urgency. The Confession teaches that those whom God has “accepted in his Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved” (WCF 17.1), yet it also warns that believers “may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world … fall into grievous sins; and, for a time, continue therein” (WCF 17.3), incurring God’s displeasure, grieving the Spirit, and bringing “temporal judgments upon themselves.” James’s wanderer is such a believer in danger, or a professing member who was never truly of the body (1 John 2:19); from the restorer’s side the two cannot be told apart, and so he must go as though a soul depends on it. The doctrine does not remove the means; it guarantees their success for the elect. God keeps his people “by the seed of God abiding in them, and the nature of the covenant of grace” (WCF 17.2), and one of the ways that seed is nourished is the brother who comes to bring the wanderer back. The Larger Catechism names “the grace of perseverance” as a gift (WLC 79), and this passage shows the church as its instrument. Practically, perseverance gives the restorer confidence: no elect wanderer will finally be lost, and the labour is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). It gives the returned wanderer assurance: his sins are covered, not merely suspended. And it forbids presumption: no one may claim perseverance while refusing to be brought back, since the God who keeps his people keeps them in the way of repentance and fellowship. Cross-references: John 10:27–29; Romans 8:30, 38–39; Philippians 1:6; 1 Peter 1:5; Jude 24; Luke 22:32.

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Reformed Theology

Reformed theology reads James 5:13–20 within the covenant of grace and finds in it the ordinary life of the new covenant church. The passage presupposes that God has bound himself by promise to hear his people, and that his people respond in the covenant speech of prayer, praise, and confession. Calvin sets the tone: the verse on prayer and praise teaches that “there is no time in which God does not invite us to himself,” and the anointing with oil is a sign accompanying the extraordinary gift of healing in the apostolic church, sharply distinguished from Rome’s extreme unction, a counterfeit that turned a means of recovery into a rite for the dying (Institutes 4.19.18–21). The Reformed churches have uniformly refused the sign sacramental status (WCF 27.4) and located the healing of the sick in the church’s ordinary prayer. Poole and Henry read the promise of v. 15 as true “with the usual reservation,” according to God’s will, as the Westminster standards frame all prayer (WSC 98).

The confessional echoes are dense. The definition of repentance unto life and the rules for confession in WCF 15 are drawn in part from v. 16; the doctrine of the communion of saints in WCF 26 describes the mutual confession and intercession James commands; the church government of WCF 30–31 assumes the elders of v. 14; and the doctrine of perseverance in WCF 17 governs the reading of vv. 19–20. Sinclair Ferguson has stressed that assurance is never a licence for complacency: the one who is kept is kept through the pursuit of his brothers and the confession of his sins. R. C. Sproul insisted that God’s sovereignty over healing is the ground of prayer, not its enemy.

The typology of the passage is rich. Elijah is a type of the righteous intercessor whose prayer opens a shut heaven, fulfilled in Christ, in whom heaven is torn open (Mark 1:10) and the Spirit poured out like rain. Geerhardus Vos would set the passage in the light of the two ages: its healing and restoration are powers of the age to come, real but partial, until the resurrection. G. K. Beale’s temple theme is apt at v. 18: Solomon’s temple prayer for rain after confession (1 Kings 8:35–36) is answered in Elijah and finally in Christ, the true temple. The shepherd imagery of Ezekiel 34, fulfilled in the Good Shepherd and delegated to the elders (1 Peter 5:1–4), unites the sick of v. 14 and the strayed of v. 19 in one pastoral picture.

On the question of Israel and the church, Reformed theology sees no discontinuity in James’s use of Elijah. The prophet of the divided kingdom is set before the scattered “twelve tribes” (James 1:1), Jewish Christians who are the true Israel in Christ, and his story is their story because there is one people of God under one covenant of grace in two administrations. Spurgeon preached Elijah as encouragement to ordinary believers: his greatness lay in his God, and the same God is ours. John Piper argues from v. 16 that prayer prevails because God has ordained to act through it, participating in his purpose rather than changing his mind. D. A. Carson warns against reading v. 15 as an unconditional guarantee, since the New Testament’s unhealed saints require the qualification of 1 John 5:14. The sum of the Reformed reading is that James 5:13–20 describes a church that prays because God has promised, confesses because God forgives, and restores because God keeps his own.

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Dispensational Theology

Dispensational interpreters approach James 5:13–20 with a literal-grammatical hermeneutic and an attention to the letter’s Jewish character. C. I. Scofield regarded James as a distinctly Jewish-Christian epistle, written to “the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (James 1:1) before the church’s distinctive calling was fully revealed through Paul, and older dispensationalists treated some of its instructions as transitional. On the anointing with oil, dispensational commentators divide between a medicinal reading, in which the verse commands both prayer and the best available medicine, and a symbolic one. Most deny that it is a sacrament, and the older tradition of Chafer and Walvoord, holding that the sign gifts of the apostolic age were temporary credentials, is cautious about reading v. 14 as a standing promise of miraculous healing. Charles Ryrie’s study notes hold that the oil either had medicinal value or symbolised the Spirit’s presence, and that the emphasis falls on prayer, not the oil.

On v. 15, dispensational teachers generally agree that healing is not guaranteed and cite the same passages as Reformed interpreters, Paul’s thorn (2 Corinthians 12:7–9) and Trophimus left at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). J. Dwight Pentecost stressed that the prayer of faith is prayer in submission to the revealed will of God. Where dispensational readings diverge most sharply from the Reformed is on vv. 19–20. Because classical dispensationalism has often been allied with a “free grace” understanding of assurance, in which a genuine believer’s eternal security is unconditional and unrelated to perseverance, some interpreters (Zane Hodges most notably) take “save his soul from death” to mean the preservation of a believer’s physical life from premature death as a temporal judgment (compare 1 Corinthians 11:30), not deliverance from eternal death. On this reading the wanderer is a true Christian whose sin brings temporal discipline, and the restorer spares him that discipline. Not all dispensationalists follow Hodges; progressive dispensationalists such as Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock see eternal death in view and the restored wanderer as one whose profession is proved genuine by his return.

Elijah receives special attention in dispensational thought because of his future role. Malachi 4:5–6 promises Elijah’s coming before the day of the Lord, and while Jesus applied this to John the Baptist in a preliminary sense (Matthew 11:14), dispensationalists commonly hold that the promise awaits a literal fulfilment in the tribulation period, and many identify one of the two witnesses of Revelation 11:3–6, who “have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall,” with Elijah himself. The “three years and six months” of James 5:17 is then read as a deliberate foreshadowing of the 1,260 days of the witnesses’ ministry. Walvoord’s commentary on Revelation and Pentecost’s Things to Come develop this line. The Israel-church distinction shapes the reading of the whole letter: the readers are Jewish believers of the church age, but their identity as “the twelve tribes” is taken literally, and the letter’s use of Elijah is seen as evidence of continuing Jewish self-consciousness within the early church rather than as a claim that the church is the new Israel.

Practically, the two traditions converge on the passage’s main instructions and diverge on the framework, on the meaning of “death” in v. 20, and on Elijah’s eschatological future. Reformed readers hold that the literal-grammatical method, consistently applied, yields James’s own reading of Elijah as a covenant intercessor whose story is fulfilled in Christ and shared by the whole people of God, and that “death” in v. 20 is the death of James 1:15, from which restoration to the truth delivers.

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Bibliography

Commentaries

• Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (James). Translated by John Owen. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855.
• Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 6. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991.
• Poole, Matthew. A Commentary on the Holy Bible, vol. 3. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1963.
• Manton, Thomas. A Practical Commentary, or an Exposition with Notes on the Epistle of James. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1968 (1693).
• Moo, Douglas J. The Letter of James. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
• Motyer, J. Alec. The Message of James. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985.
• McCartney, Dan G. James. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.
• Davids, Peter H. The Epistle of James. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982.
• Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Letter of James. Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1995.
• Blomberg, Craig L., and Mariam J. Kamell. James. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008.
• Ryrie, Charles C. The Ryrie Study Bible. Chicago: Moody, 1978.
• Scofield, C. I., ed. The Scofield Reference Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1917.

Theological and Historical Works

• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960.
• Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948.
• Beale, G. K. The Temple and the Church’s Mission. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
• Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Whole Christ. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.
• Sproul, R. C. Does Prayer Change Things? Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2009.
• Piper, John. Desiring God. Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011.
• Carson, D. A. How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.
• Spurgeon, C. H. “The Prayer of Faith” and “Elijah’s Prayer.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. London: Passmore & Alabaster.
• Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.
• Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History 2.23 (citing Hegesippus on James).
• Hodges, Zane C. The Epistle of James: Proven Character Through Testing. Irving, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 1994.
• Walvoord, John F. The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Chicago: Moody, 1966.
• Pentecost, J. Dwight. Things to Come. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1958.
• Blaising, Craig A., and Darrell L. Bock. Progressive Dispensationalism. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993.
• Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology. Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press, 1948.

Confessional Standards

• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapters 5, 15, 17, 21, 25–27, 30.
• The Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), Q. 19, 79, 178, 183.
• The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648), Q. 87, 98.

Primary Sources and Reference

• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.
• Sirach 48:1–12 (on Elijah), in The Apocrypha.
• Bauer, Walter, et al. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.