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."