Perhaps the most quoted verse in the Bible about the power of prayer is the last sentence of James 5:16: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,” or, as the KJV says, “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” The NIV says, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” And the NLT says, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Any way you slice it, James makes it clear that there’s power in prayer that there isn’t elsewhere—that Christian prayer is an activity which by its very nature admits man’s powerlessness and God’s powerfulness for everything from the soothing of suffering to the saving of souls.
You can have a house full of electrical sockets, but if there’s no wiring connecting them to the power source, plugging your toaster or sweeper into the wall is pointless. Prayer is the line that carries our load before God, and prayer is the channel through which God’s power flows to His people. Those of us who follow Jesus are like outlets, recepticals of God’s power, but also relay stations. You don’t install electrical outlets for decoration; they’re functional—they connect need to source and source to need! Jesus has not installed you and I into His Church purely for decoration but for the ministry of deliverance: we deliver people to a powerful God and we deliver God’s power to people through prayer.
Last week we looked at praying for ourselves; today we consider praying for others. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,” is a powerful statement alone but an even more powerful when understood in its context. So we’ll begin with context then move to the verse’s core content.
Context
A Christian Context. What’s the context of James 5:16b? First of all, it’s a Christian context. The entire epistle is written to a Christian community; it is for a Christian community; all of James’ instructions are intended to be heeded by Christians living in the consecrated Christian community of the local church—by people who confess together that Jesus is Lord. “Is anyone among you suffering?” James asks in v. 13. “Let him pray.” He’s is addressing specific people, not mankind in general. “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.” If James is writing to a mixed Christian/non-Christian audience, does he want the Christians to praise the Christian God and the non-Christians to praise their pagan gods? Of course not! “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.”
After less than ten minutes looking at this text on Friday morning, Patrick called to tell me that Beth was being taken by ambulance to the hospital with breathing and swallowing difficulty. He wasn’t panicked, but wanted me to know what was going on. I didn’t get the impression he wanted me to come right away, so I told him I would pray and let a few others know so they could be praying. So when the call ended I prayed and tried to get back to the sermon, but realized my sister needed my attention right then more than the sermon! So I stopped by the house for a little olive oil and went to the hospital. Technology makes asking for prayer and letting people know you’re praying for them easy, but Christians need to set boundaries on technological convenience. Sometimes praying for others means doing so in the presence of others. This is part of what makes Christian community Christian community.
James’ words about prayer here are meant for Christian people! And as Christians we need to be careful how we speak or don’t speak about prayer to non-Christians. The God of the Bible has nowhere obliged Himself to hear or answer the prayers of non-believers. We’ll talk about this more in a moment in v. 16 where James says, “The prayer of a ‘righteous’ person has great power…” But for now we simply need to agree that while religious people all over the world may do something they call “praying,” they’re just talking; they’re just sending up un-heard words to un-hearing gods, and this ought to break our hearts.
Prayer is such an important topic to discuss with non-Christians, because unless they’re atheists they most likely have a concept of prayer. Your chances of engaging a Muslim on the topic of prayer will be far better than on the topic of the Trinity. Muslims reject the Trinity, but they believe in something they call prayer. We can ask them who they pray to, why they believe their prayers will be answered, where their god promises to hear and answer their prayers, and how their god has answered their prayers in the past. And for every religion other than biblical Christianity the answers will invariably have to do with their works, their performance, their production, their good behavior. Their hopes that their god will look favorably upon them and their prayers will always revolve around what they do or don’t do. ALWAYS!
But, by contrast, Christians can humbly yet boldly say that our belief in prayer has nothing to do with our merits and everything to do with our God’s grace. We can say that we pray to a heavenly Father. We can say that we believe our prayers will be answered because His Son, Jesus, promised they would be: “Ask and you shall receive;” “Whatsoever you ask of my Father in my name, He will give you…” And we can honestly show them how our God has answered our prayers, sometimes with ‘yeses’, sometimes with ‘nos,’ sometimes with ‘not-yets’ but always through His grace, for our greatest good and His greatest glory.
Prayer is a heavy thing for Christians and non-Christians alike, but for very different reasons. For Christians, prayer is heavy because we pray to a God who has forgiven us through the perfect performance of another, Jesus. But prayer is a heavy thing for non-Christians because they pray to a god or gods who may or may not forgive them on the basis of their own performance. Non-Christians pray for themselves and others with uncertainty, having the squeaky, teetering scales of justice always in view—a giant question mark always in the back of their minds: Have I done enough good to be granted this request, or have I done too much bad? But by contrast, Christians pray with the cross always in view—a gigantic exclamation point, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20: For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.”
Suffering and Sin. James is writing to a Christian community about prayer, a Christian community whom he expects to be not only praying for one another but also engaging non-Christians with the good news of salvation through Christ. That’s the first aspect of the context of v. 16b. A second aspect of this verse’s context is suffering and sin. I’ll group these two together since they’re related—there would be no suffering or sickness in the world were it not for sin; human sin is at the root of all human suffering. I would never say to our sister, Beth, “Beth, your ALS is a direct result of XYZ sin in your life. Are you satisfied? Look what you’ve brought on yourself.” But Beth would fully agree that her ALS is a consequence of living in a world under the curse of God for human sin—as are all forms of suffering and sickness.
James assumes his audience understands that sin and suffering are linked; and so should we. He also injects prayer into the suffering and sin equation. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.” “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him…” But don’t you love how, in between suffering (v. 13) and sickness (v. 14), James says, “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise”? How wrong it would be for us to limit our prayers to seeking relief from suffering and sickness while leaving out prayers of praise for the many things in life that bring us cheer. For Christians—no matter the degree of present suffering—no prayer ought to be entirely void of praise and thanksgiving. We have a Savior! We have eternal salvation through Jesus Christ who has purchased us with His own blood on the cross—the free gift of a gracious God!
In v. 15 James says, “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.”
I want to be delicate here, but I also want to be clear. Many of you have prayed for the healing of loved ones—for sick and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ—and physical healing did not come; the Lord did not ‘raise that brother or sister up’ in this world. And while that is sad, there is absolutely nothing in the New Testament (or the whole Bible for that matter) that should lead Christians to think that either immediate or progressive restoration of physical health to these present bodies, in this present life, is normative. It isn’t. Every biblical example of physical healing or raising the dead back to life—whether in the ministry of the Old Testament prophets, Jesus’ ministry, or in the apostles’ ministries—it is always accompanied by bewildered astonishment; it’s always extra-ordinary; it’s always a-typical; it’s never seen as commonplace; it’s always a miracle and it’s always seen as a miracle! Why is that? It’s because the purpose of miracles is to momentarily suspend the natural laws governing the present world in order for God—who established those laws in the first place—to give us a glimpse into the world to come.
And for God’s people, the world to come is a world free of sin, sickness and suffering—a world of perfect and permanent health and perpetual resurrection! James doesn’t say in v. 15, “The prayer of faith will heal the sick one;” he says, “The prayer of faith will save the sick one.” He doesn’t say, “and the Lord will make him whole or well;” he says, “and the Lord will raise him up.” There’s more going for the follower of Christ than temporary physical healing: there’s salvation going on! There’s resurrection going on, because forgiveness of sins has gone on—ultimate healing has gone on!! Are we glorified yet? Do we have our glorious eternal bodies yet? No, but a piece of the perfect permanent health of heaven has invaded our present; a piece of the resurrection has invaded our present; the future has come to us now in the form of forgiveness of sins.
This is the context of James’ exhortation to pray: sickness, suffering, confession, forgiveness, healing, resurrection. Never let your present physical sickness, sin and suffering eclipse spiritual forgiveness, healing, and resurrection in your praying for others. Pray that the present experience of yourself and those you love will be invaded and colored by the eternity that’s before us (and indeed already begun in us through Jesus).