Who heals?

My church is going to have a service of prayer for healing in a couple of weeks. This isn't a "healing service" as popularly imagined, where we expect to see immediate, miraculous cures during the service (although I wouldn't rule it out, since the Holy Spirit works as He wills). Rather, we are attempting to put into practice the passage in James 5:13-16 on prayers for the sick.

We have many people in our church who are going through difficult physical challenges right now, and they ask us to pray for them. We certainly believe that every Christian can and ought to pray for those who are sick, and that you don't need an elder praying over you to get better. Still, there is a reason this passage was written by James and became part of our Bible.

 If you were part of the Wednesday night James study, we went over this is a little more detail, and I posted the notes in the Library on the Pastor Steve's Study web site. Here I just want to go over what we plan to do and how it fits together with what we studied in James.

In the service, we will have the pastoral staff (who are the elders in our particular church setting) praying, with the deacons assisting. While this isn't a direct application of James' injunction to "call for the elders," it does reflect the underlying idea that the elders of the church ought to be pastorally concerned for the needs of the church members. It does also require the one seeking prayer to let the elders know he or she needs prayer.

We will be using oil to anoint the sick. While some scholars argue that this was more for medicinal purposes, as oil was often used as a curative, I think in James it also has a symbolic significance. With the anointing done "in the name of the Lord," I think the oil, as often in the NT, symbolizes the Holy Spirit. Notice that this anointing mentioned in James isn't done as the person is dying; it is done with the expectation that the sick person will be made well.

James does not say that the anointing, the oil, or the elders are what makes the person well. It is the "prayer of faith," the prayer offered in  a full understanding of who God is and what He can do, that is answered by God and brings healing. This prayer is not a magic formula that forces God to do something He doesn't want to do. Rather, it is a prayer offered in full submission to God, and one which recognizes that physical healing isn't always the answer God wants to give us. Healing is accomplished by the work of the Spirit whom the oil represents, not by the oil, the words, or the people involved.

There is also a connection with sin and forgiveness in James. Not all sickness is the result of sin, but some is. Sometimes it is because of the consequences of sinful actions, but it may also be God's way of getting our attention. We should never focus so much on the health of the body that we forget the health of the soul. Healing involves getting the whole person right, and you can be perfectly healthy in body but terribly sick in your soul. You can also be struggling with a number of illnesses, yet be in good spiritual health if you continue to rely on the Lord in your struggles.

When you read all of James, it becomes apparent that he doesn't believe that Christians are delivered from all suffering. In fact, James tells us trials should be welcomed because of what God accomplishes through them. We don't have to like suffering, but we do need to recognize that it is often through our trials that grow more like Jesus.

So we will pray for the sick and suffering, but depend on the Lord to bring about the healing. We will pray for the body and the soul, we will use oil to symbolize the source of healing rather than as a healing agent itself, and we will pray in the knowledge that "the intense prayer of the righteous is very powerful."

A humble heart

James is at his fiery best in chapter 4 of his epistle. I can hear him in my imagination thundering from the "pulpit" about the dangers of sinful desires and trying to be friends with the world. In this chapter, I think there is a common thread that ties together the sections, and that is pride. It is pride that causes us to put ourselves and our desires ahead of serving the Lord, that makes us want to be respected by the world, that leads us to criticizing others, and that sets us up to boast about our futures as if we controlled history. Pride was the first sin, and it is often a root of many other sins.

What is James' solution to this problem? Naturally, it is humility. He quotes Proverbs 3:34, which states that God "gives grace to the humble." It seems like that means we hve to earn God's grace through our attitude, but I think there is a deeper truth here. The proud person will not receive God's grace, not because it is not offered, but because he sees no need of it. If I am in control, and everything is going my way, why would I want to ask God for grace? "I don't need God or His grace; I'm doing just fine, thank you." 

The humble person receives God's grace because he or she recognizes a desperate need for that grace. If I understand who I am before God, and just what sin means, I will not approach the Lord with pride asking for what I think I deserve, because I know exactly what I do deserve, and it's a fearsome judgment. If I am truly humble, I will ask for grace since it is the only thin that keeps me from hell. 

Submission to God is required, and talking about submission is not popular in our contemporary Western culture. If we look at James' call to submit to God in its context, wee see that in the very next verse he talks about drawing near to God. Submission to God is not an abject groveling at the feet of a cruel and exacting master; it is drawing near, with proper reverence, to a loving Father who is the almighty Creator of the universe. There's enough there that I won't approach God in a flippant manner, but I can be encouraged that He wants me to draw near.

Humility also helps us "resist the devil." We know we need help, we need grace, and we need a power beyond what we have to resist Satan's temptations. Satan himself fell because of pride, and he will use ours to goad us to serving ourselves rather than the Lord. As long as we are aware of our own penchant for sin, and constantly come to od for forgiveness when we do sin, we can maintain the kind of humble attitude that stills the call to pride.

Humility is really just recognizing who we are in God's sight: sinners, saved by grace, and beloved now as children of God. We won't think too highly of ourselves and our own goodness, nor will we wallow in depression over our sorry state. We will think of ourselves as God does, and each day gain an increased understanding of how He sees us and how we can serve Him. With that kind of humility, we can avoid a great deal of temptation to go our own way, and stay on the path God has made for us.

The fiery tongue

The images used by James in chapter 3 of his epistle to describe the tongue are striking: the horse and bit, ship and rudder. taming of wild animals. None is more striking, however, than the comparison of the tongue to a fire. While fire can be used for good, James doesn't have any of that in mind here. This fire is destructive, begun by a small spark but creating a wide swath of destruction.

I believe, despite not having any hard empirical data, that most church divisions and fights are caused by words. Most of these fights don't even involve fundamental theological or historical issues; they are caused when one person or group starts talking about another. Passions become inflamed, and things quickly spiral out of control, leaving behind the destruction of any kind of witness for Jesus and breaking apart ties of Christian family.

What we need to notice in James' use of this analogy is the source of the fire. He says in verse 6 that the tongue is "set on fire by hell." This certainly includes the work of Satan and the demons in tempting Christians to misuse their words, but I think it goes further. Hell, as the place of eternal judgment, is the place where each creature has itself as the object of care, concern, and worship. There is no need to bow to God or concede to His laws and commandments. That kind of hell, placing ourselves as the ultimate concern of ourselves, is reflected in destructive, selfish talk.

Reading James 3, you can sense the passion with which he might have preached this message. He urges his readers not to give in to self, not to allow their speech free reign, but to learn to control it. While the small tongue may change the entire course of our lives (as many translations render the unusual phrase in verse 6), it can be controlled by heavenly wisdom. That's the connection between the discussion of the tongue and the discussion of the two wisdoms later in the chapter.

How can we control what we say? We have to be changed from the inside out. We need the kind of wisdom described in verse 17, where is is called the "wisdom from above." This may be a reference to 1:17, where "every perfect gift" is said to come from "above." It is a wisdom that is heavenly, coming from a heavenly source. We cannot that is "first pure, the peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without favoritism and hypocrisy" unless we have the Holy Spirit filling us with His fruit. But when we yield to the Spirit, we can gain control of our lives and our tongues through the strength He gives us.

Will we be perfect? Not in this life. I wish I had better control of my words and my speech (and so do the people who have to listen to me ramble on!). As we grow more like Jesus, and as we allow the Spirit to do His work in our lives, we will get better at it. Maybe only a little here and little there at times, but we will see our speech start to look like Jesus' words. When we do, we will be able to prevent those "fires" that our tongues may cause.