Objection: Faith Teachers Say to HEAL the Sick, but James Said to PRAY for Them

James 5:16:
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

This is admittedly an extremely difficult Scripture, as it seems to contradict other things found in other places.  The objector figures that he has untangled it and he concludes that James said that we should pray for each other’s healing, in contrast to Jesus’ instructions to HEAL the sick, not PRAY FOR the sick.  So who’s right?  Or has there been a dispensation change and now we have to pray for the sick after all?

The problem is that the objector is reading something into this verse that the verse itself does not support.  James says that we should confess our faults to each other and pray for each other, and the result of that is that we will be healed.  But James did NOT actually say that we should pray for each other’s healing the way the objector thinks that he did.

In other words, the objector’s reading is:

“Confess your faults one to another”
“Pray one for another to be healed”

while it appears that the idea of the text should be:

“Confess your faults to one another and pray one for another.”
“When you do this, you will be healed.”

I checked a number of other translations and could not even find one of them that hinted that the King James comma between “pray for one another” and “that you may be healed” was a mistake.  So it seems that the exhortation is to admit your shortcomings to each other and pray for each other, and people will get healed as a result.  If they do, they won’t be the first.  Job was healed when he prayed for HIS friends.

There is certainly NO basis to make this out to say:

“Confess your faults to each other and pray to God that He will heal the other people among you.”

which is probably what more traditional people think it means, although they will further ruin things by saying that the healing is spiritual.

This may seem like a minor distinction, but I need to bring up another minor distinction, because the objection itself is actually quite misleading.  It gives the impression that I, a faith person, will endeavor to heal the sick, but I will not pray for the sick.  That is not true!  I will not ask God to heal the sick, if that is your idea of praying for the sick.  That would be wrong.  God, in His mind, has already healed the sick by sending Jesus, by whose stripes you were physically healed (1 Peter 2:24).  So I do not petition God to do something about anyone’s sickness.  But I DO pray for sick people; the only thing is that my prayer is more like Paul’s prayers.  “Lord, show So-and-So what you’ve already done about his healing.  Give him real revelation on that topic.  Let him know that you love him enough to heal him.”  That IS praying for the sick; it just isn’t the kind of useless praying for the sick that goes on in most churches.  (“Now we lift up Aunt Sarah to you for healing, and we ‘remember’ Uncle Philip and all other people that we have unspoken prayer requests for tonight.”)

My best take on this verse is that if you’re stuck in pride and selfishness, it will be hard for you to be healed.  If you’re willing to admit your failures (which helps eliminate pride) and pray for other people (which helps eliminate selfishness), you are setting yourself with a much better mindset to receive healing.  After all, James had gotten through telling you a chapter ago that God resists the proud but exalts the humble.  Being proud will get in your way, but being humble will make it easier for you to receive.  A proud person often resorts to his track record to justify being healed, while a humble person will realize that was Jesus did was 100% grace and he can receive healing on that basis.

It seems that James urges confessing of sins to others to get help.  This certainly doesn’t mean to tell the whole church everything you’re doing wrong.  You don’t want them to know everything you’re doing wrong and they probably don’t want to know either.  But you can find someone to admit your struggles to, and the mere act of admitting that you’re struggling in an area could close some doors to the devil, who’d love for you to keep everything all bottled up and think that you’re the only person who has ever lived who had to deal with your particular weak area.

The next part about praying for one another would seem to complement this first thought.  When people share their struggles with others, those others should pray for the ones with the struggles.  The result of all this will be an atmosphere of mutual support where it will be easier to receive healing.

If you confess to me that you’re having a struggle, my part isn’t to phone the supermarket tabloids about it so that your story can run next week right under the one that says “Woman Gives Birth to Her Own Mother!”  My part would be to PRAY FOR YOU.  If we all did that, we would be in a much better position to be healed, as we would not be carting around secret bags of shame that we don’t want anyone else to know about.  We would be living freer, and thus in a better position to receive healing.

As pointed out elsewhere, the Bible does not teach that you can confess your sins to get saved or confess your sins to get forgiven.  (If you think that the Bible DOES teach that, please read What 1 John 1:9 Really Means to clear up the common misunderstanding of that verse.)  So it doesn’t make sense to me that you could confess your sins to get healed, either.  I don’t think that could be what James had in mind.

But suppose that you don’t like my explanation and you insist on taking out the comma in question to make this verse end with “pray for one another that you may be healed.”  That is how most people would understand the verse.  In other words, they think that James said, “Pray for one another’s healings.”  But even then, this verse would still be a healing verse instead of a stay-sick verse.  (There aren’t any real stay-sick verses, by the way.)  If that were really what God were exhorting here, then He would HAVE TO honor that prayer.  Surely God would not COMMAND you to pray for something and then not answer the prayer after you were obedient to pray it!  That would be like God COMMANDING telling you to pray for those in authority but then refusing to answer the very prayer He commanded you to pray.  So this would be yet another way to get healed, not a way to stay sick!  So it just doesn’t work as an objection to healing in general.