Objection: James’s Command Was for the Dispersed Jews, Not All Christians Throughout Time

Isn’t it ironic that the people who quote James 1:2-4 about falling into diverse trials never stop to think whether that applies to you?  (That passage gets quoted a lot by unbelief teachers.)  Yet the statement has been made that James was just talking to the Jews about praying over the sick.  If so, why read the book of James anyway if you’re not a Jew?  Why does one part apply and not another?

One objector went so far as to claim that James means that the sick should call for the elders of the synagogue.  This is just plain ridiculous when the Greek word ekklesia is used for “church” in James 5:14.  While ekklesia can refer to any assembly of people in the Greek, including an unruly mob in Acts 19:41 (“And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly [ekklesia].”), it is the word used throughout the New Testament to refer to the church – it refers to the church 115 times, to an assembly 3 times, and NEVER to a synagogue!  Some people have gone the other way and made a doctrine about ekklesia having to mean the ruling group in an area, which supposedly means that the church should rule the area, but the ungodly mob in Acts 19:41 was not the ruling group in the area, and the word ekklesia simply means assembly.  If Paul could really dominate areas with his “apostolic authority” over them (as some teach in error today), he would surely have put a stop to all the vicious persecution that he endured, and he would have stopped the Caesars from doing all the bad things that they were famous for, stopped all the idolatrous temple worship in Athens and Ephesus, and so on.

If James were just written to the “twelve tribes scattered abroad,” as it is addressed, then Paul’s letter to the Galatians only applied to the Galatians, the letter to the Romans only applied to the Romans, only Timothy had to be gentle instead of quarrelsome, only the Philippians could trust God to supply all their needs, only Gaius should prosper and be in health, only the Ephesians sat with Christ in the heavenlies, and so on.  What an absurd notion!

James made it clear that he was talking about the “last days” (James 5:1-6), which definitely applies to the time we live in as well as the time they lived in.

No one would preach this ridiculous objection unless he were looking to a way to explain why James’s clear command to the sick to be prayed over and raised up does not apply today.  The only way around this clear command of Scripture is to say it was only for some, not all.  If you apply this illogic, you can conclude that almost nothing in the whole Bible applies to you personally.  That is not rightly dividing the word of truth.  Of course, if this objector’s logic were true, only Timothy would have to rightly divide the word of truth, so the objector wouldn’t have to do so – which would be fortunate for him, seeing as he didn’t.

The final nail in the coffin for this objection is that the sick were supposed to call for the elders of the church (James 5:14), not the synagogue!  So of course, the audience had to include church members, even though some of the recipients were unsaved based on the context.