Objection: James’s Command Makes It Clear That We Should Expect to Be Sick, Then Healed, Then Sick, Then Healed, Not Always Healthy

An objector wrote that because James wrote instructions for the sick, we should all expect to be sick, then healed, then sick, then healed, as part of normal life, rather than expecting to live in “divine health.”

The objection does carry a little weight in light of James 5:16, where if believers are “real” with each other and pray for each other, they can expect to be healed.  It is clear, therefore, as the objector says, that we may get sick.  It is equally clear that it is not the will of God for us to be sick, because you are supposed to get healed when you are prayed over.  Remember that James 5:16 also talks about confessing our shortcomings to each other.  I think it is a fair statement that you are going to sin, and so am I.  That does not make sin the will of God.  You can sin, get forgiven, sin, get forgiven, etc., throughout your life, just as you can get sick, then healed, then sick, then healed, and so on.  That does not make sickness the will of God for you any more it makes sin the will of God for you.  You don’t have to sin.  Sin is a deliberate choice to be out of the will of God.  You don’t have to get sick, either, but there are instructions on what to do if you do get sick.

Note that James 5:14-16 mainly refers to an invalid.  James is talking about someone who is so sick he cannot go to church on his own.  He has to call for the elders, not go to the elders.  The elders are to pray over him (implying that he is bedfast) and the prayer of faith will raise him up (also implying that he is bedfast).  These are instructions for the seriously ill.  This is also clear from the fact that James said that this was what to do if there were any among you in this condition.  You would probably not find a congregation of more than a handful of people today where someone did not have some kind of physical problem, but most of them would not have the kind of serious problem that James addresses.

It is clearly not God’s will for all of us to be critically ill, bedfast and unable to go to church, then to get healed when the elders come, then to lapse back into a helpless state, then to get healed when the elders come again, and so on.  The poor elders!  I would not want to be an elder in a church that considers this normal!

Just as it is God’s will for us not to sin, it is God’s will for us not to be sick.  This is clear from many Scripture passages quoted in this book.  God wants you to prosper and be in health, not simply get healed (3 John 2).  There is no indication that Gaius was sick.  It is God’s explicit will for no plague to come nigh your dwelling (see Psalm 91), let alone get in your body and require you to be healed.  In fact, these Scriptures alone are enough to refute the objection by themselves.

Jesus, our perfect example, did not sin and did not get sick.  That should be our goal.  If we fall short of this, we should pick ourselves up and keep pressing toward the goal (Philippians 3:13).  Rather than considering our bodies (Romans 4:19) or the sick bodies of others who do not believe in healing, we should consider Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

Even this objection itself shoots itself in the foot as an argument against divine healing, because it assumes that you will get healed periodically, which still beats staying sick or dying.