James 5:15: The "prayer" of faith

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James 5:15

If we are sick, James instructs us to "call the elders of the church", have them pray over us and anoint us with oil, and then, he says, the "prayer of faith" will restore us. The word rendered here as prayer, however, is a little unusual.¹ Commenting on this, Josh Easter (a student at Southwest Baptist University) writes:

The word James choses to use for “prayer” (εὐχὴ) is an interesting selection. More commonly, εὐχὴ carries a sense of “vow” or “oath” (as in Acts 18:18). However, that would not be the meaning in this case, as James used ὅρκον for that sense in 5:12. The significance is possibly that James’s use of εὐχὴ carries the force of commitment. That is, a faithful prayer requires proper motives (cf. 4:3), trust, and commitment.2

This is an interesting observation but problematic. If one concludes, as Easter suggests, that εὐχὴ should not be translated as "vow" here because ὅρκον was employed three verses earlier, then the inverse logic should be applied to James not using προσεύχομαι, the most common New Testament word for prayer, which is used by James two verses later in 5:17 (and in its verbal form in 5:13, 14, 17, and 18). Following Easter's logic, the fact that James doesn't use προσεύχομαι here should imply that he does not intend to say "prayer" when he uses the word εὐχὴ (not even prayer that "carries the force of commitment"). 

Admittedly, the New Testament usage of εὐχὴ is scant; it only appears three times (Acts 18:18, Acts 21:23, and here in James 5:15), but the other two times it is very clearly used is in the sense of a vow. I think a more likely explanation for James' use of εὐχὴ is that he is writing about prayer in the sense other than the way it is usually understood. While the word can mean either "speech or petition directed to God", it can also mean "a solemn promise with the understanding that one is subject to penalty for failure to discharge the obligation"³ In contrast to Easter, I think the secondary meaning is actually a more compelling option for James.

This second meaning carries with it a clear expectation that the elders should indeed be able to follow through. The prayer is not simply a request directed to God, asking him to heal the sick person "if it be his will." It is an expected duty of the elders, which is something also evident in the use of the future indicative active form of σῴζω that immediately follows: "And the [εὐχὴ] of faith will heal the sick" (The Passion Translation, emphasis mine).

James leaves no room for doubt regarding the outcome to be expected. The elders will bring about healing through their εὐχὴ. He does not say they might, or that healing was dependent on God's will on the particular occasion, but simply that they would be effective.

This idea is the twin of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 17:18-20:

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive [the demon out of the boy]?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (NIV)

Jesus clearly implies that his disciples should have been able to drive out the demon as he did. The issue was not God's will, but their faith. With even a tiny seed of faith, nothing should be impossible for a follower of Jesus. 

The correlation between Jesus' words and James' is even more apparent in Mark 11:22-24:

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." (NIV, emphasis mine)

The fact that Jesus equates speaking to the mountain with prayer is instructive. We tend to understand prayer as dialog with God (or perhaps even a monolog directed at God), but in Jesus' words above and in James 5:15 it takes on a different form. Rather than speaking to God, it becomes something more like speaking with or for God. 

This type of "prayer" was modeled by Jesus to his disciples when he healed the sick (e.g., Matthew 8:3, Matthew 12:13, Mark 7:34, Luke 4:39, John 5:8), and we see them and others employing it in the book of Acts (e.g., Acts 3:6, Acts 9:17, ‭Acts 9:34, Acts 14:10). 

In Word of Faith teaching, it is common to hear that Jesus was telling people to do something as a way of getting them to "activate their faith," but this is faulty for three reasons. 

• First of all, Jesus is not always giving instructions to the person. Sometimes he speaks to the illness or body part (e.g., Mark 7:34 and Luke 4:39). Most notably, in the case of the deaf man in Mark 7:32-35, he gave a verbal command ("be opened') to a deaf man, and based on then wording of the result (the man’s ears were "opened") he was more specifically addressing the ears.
• Secondly, he also gave instructions to dead people (Luke 7:11–17, Luke 8:52–56, John 11), as did Peter (Acts 9:36–43). As these people were dead, they could not actively respond to Jesus. They rose from the dead as a result of the commands given, not because their own faith was engaged.
• And finally, they could only do what Jesus commanded after they had been healed. Neither the lame nor the dead can rise before a miracle occurs nor can the deaf hear before they are healed, so a response cannot be prerequisite to healing. In the case of Jesus instructing the deaf man's ears to "be opened" (Mark 7:34), the man was either healed before Jesus gave the command or he and his ears where physically incapable of hearing the command when it was given.

The "prayer of faith" then may be less of a command and more of a pronouncement where we speak with and for Jesus rather than making requests to the Father. Perhaps the clearest example of this is found in Acts 9:34, where Peter first tells Aeneas, "Jesus Christ heals you," and then tells him to, "Get up and roll up your mat."

FOOTNOTES

1. This fact was first brought to my attention by Art Thomas in a video posted on his YouTube channel: "Effortless Healing", posted February 13, 2015 (minutes 35:07-36:49).

2. Josh Easter, "The Power of Faithful Prayer: An Exegesis of James 5:13-18", paper submitted at Southwest Baptist University, April 28, 2014. 12.

3. Bauer, Walter. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. 416.

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