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James 5:16
Prayer's Power
James 5:16
Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective.
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Why it is worth knowing
- Corporate confession and prayer are linked to healing in community
- “Righteous person” does not mean perfect: it means one aligned with God in faith
- “Powerfully effective”: prayer is dynamically effective, not passive
- Mutual accountability in the body of Christ is the context for this powerful prayer
Where it sits: James 5:14-16
Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective.
Hear the passage it sits in, sung word for word, on BibleDo's James page.
Background
James closes his letter with one of the most practical passages on prayer in the New Testament. The connection between confession and healing is striking: James sees a link between spiritual honesty and physical and spiritual restoration. The Greek energoumene, rendered “insistent” here, gives prayer an active, operative quality: it is not passive petition but something that accomplishes things. The example James immediately gives is Elijah, a man with a nature like ours who prayed powerfully. The implication is that such prayer is not reserved for spiritual giants but available to ordinary believers.