Studies in the Epistle of James

by A. T. Robertson

Then it is a good time to pray “that ye may be healed.” Then the power of God is with men to heal both soul and body. Many a revival has started in a church because those who have been estranged have buried the hatchet and seen eye to eye again. There is power in prayer when the soul is open to God, as can be true only when hate disappears from the heart. “The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working,” “the prayers of the righteous have a powerful effect” (Moffatt).

This short sentence is clearer in the Greek than in any of the English renderings. Plummer suggests, “Great is the strength of a righteous man’s supplication, in its earnestness.” The word for “supplication” is more specific than the usual term and suggests a sense of need. But the crucial word is the participle, which may be either middle or passive.[97] Our word “energetic” is derived from the verbal adjective. The notion of energy is present, at any rate. The great word in modern science is this very word “energy,” which is made luminous by electricity and radium. The only prayer worthwhile is one with energy in it, whether inwrought (taking the participle as passive) by the Spirit of God or at work (middle voice) through the spiritual passion of the man’s own soul. Such a prayer has much force in it and is not a mere ceremony or rattle of meaningless words.

The emphasis on “a righteous man” here does not mean that God will not hear the cry of a sinner for mercy but probably that a righteous man is more likely to put the proper energy into his prayer. We may reflect sadly that our prayers often have no power with God because they have no energy when said. There is no power in the dynamo; the engine has gone dead; the steam is not high enough to move the driving wheel. Oesterley quotes aptly the words of Rabbi Ben Zakkai in Berachoth, 34b, when prayers for a sick child are desired: “Although I am greater in learning than Chaninah, he is more efficacious in prayer; I am indeed the Prince, but he is the Steward who has constant access to the King.” They have it because they live close to God. With a great price they have won this high prerogative. Ofttimes they are the humblest of men in earthly station and store. Very mechanical, surely, is the idea of Rabbi Isaac (Jebamoth, 64a), who says: “The prayer of the righteous is comparable to a pitchfork; as the pitchfork changes the position of the wheat so the prayer changes the disposition of God from wrath to mercy.”

James has a typical case to illustrate his point. “Elijah was a man of like passions with us,” “with a nature just like our own” (Moffatt). James emphasizes the human frailties of Elijah to show that he does not refer to ceremonial or sacramental rites when he urges prayer for the sick. Such prayer is the privilege not merely of the elders of the church but of any good man who has the ear of God. That power is not a function of ecclesiastical position but the reward of holy living and trust in God. Elijah had his weaknesses as we all have, but God heard him. The point for us is that if God heard Elijah, he will hear any of us who puts the same amount of spiritual energy into his prayer. “He prayed fervently.” There is no use to pray in any other way. Elijah prayed seven times before the rain came. Halfhearted prayer defeats itself (cf. doubting prayer in 1:6 ff.).

Many modern men have no faith in prayer of any kind save as a wholesome reaction on the mind of the one who prays. They scout the idea that the God of the universe would condescend to listen to the feeble chatter of such worms in the dust as men. They conceive it as impossible that God would alter his will in any particular because of such insignificant requests. Least of all do they admit the possibility that God would change the weather in response to the prayer of one or many individuals. They argue that the laws of the weather are fixed by the laws of nature and that God does not alter his own laws. A very pretty network of impossibilities is fixed up, but all the same, the experience of Christians breaks right through these entanglements.

A real God is greater than his own laws, and his own will is the chief law of his nature. God is not an absentee God; he is our Father and loves for us to tell him our troubles. Certainly God knows how to work his own laws. We do not have to think that Elijah had the matter of drought and rain in his own hands at his beck and call. Far from it. Elijah won by strenuous prayer and perseverance, not by lightly informing God of his wishes. Besides, when rain came in response to the prayer of Elijah, it came out of clouds, as rain always does. God made the clouds gather from the west (the Mediterranean) till the rain came. As the hot winds from the east and the south brought the drought, so the west winds brought rain. Many times in my own experience I have known people to pray for rain, and the rain came. The rain may not have come in response to the prayer; that I do not know. But it came the very night in which prayer was made for it at the prayer meeting. The difficulty in the matter of rain is no greater than in cases of sickness. The root of the trouble is the lack of trust in God, the broken relation with God, the loss of power with him.

Rescue Work or Restoring the Erring (5:19 f.)

James makes a last appeal to his readers, and it has a touch of tenderness—“My brethren.” In verse 5 he spoke of the case of a sick man who is brought to confess his sins and is led to God. Here he seems to refer specifically to the case of a brother who has fallen into error. There are such sad instances that puzzle many a pastor by their indifference, hardness, and even scorn of Christ. “If any among you err from the truth, and one convert him.”

The condition (third class) is put delicately only as a supposed case, not assumed as true and yet probable, alas. “Err” is from the Latin errare (to wander, to go astray). The Greek word here suggests the picture of one who is lost in the mountains, who has missed his path,[98] without passing on the question of his own part in the process. That is now neither here nor there, for he is lost. Our “planet” is this word, from the notion that these luminaries were wandering stars, not fixed like the rest. We now know that none of the stars are fixed, but they all move with great speed.

Whatever the cause, it is not impossible for brethren to go astray “from the truth.” One way to treat them is to kick them out of the way, down the hill. Another way is to go after them with hammer and tongs to beat them back into the path. Another course is to give them up in disgust and to wash our hands of all responsibility. It must be confessed that often it is very hard to do anything else, since brethren act with so much independence and resent any effort to show them a better way. When they start away, often they go the whole way. But there is a more excellent way—the way of love. See 1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 6:1 ff.