 If this passage is about healing, then the Bible is wrong. And welcome back to more questions as the passage that one, I was asked about, but two, it also bears us looking into this particular passage is often used by people who are into healing and listen, I believe that God heals without question. He's always been a healer. He is now he always will be. But this particular passage gets a lot of attention to say that God will heal if you have faith. It's James 5 13. And my contention is that this does not mean physical healing. This is something spiritual, not physical. Let's go to James 5 13. It says, Is anyone among you suffering? Now this can be taken as sickness, a physical sickness, or it can be taken as mental, emotional, spiritual. Keep that in mind. Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Anyone among you sick? And here it is. Anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And look what it says. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who was sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Now let's get an understanding of what's happening. This is James writing to the people. And he says, Is there anyone among you amongst you who might be suffering? Is anyone among you sick? Then he must go to verse 14. He must call for the elders. Now a couple of things. And this is where we're going to have to kind of dig deep a little bit. Not too deep, but I want you guys to see what it is that I'm saying. And by the way, this is one of those points, one of these cases where I think it's vitally important where the Greek comes in. There are people that don't like to use the Greek, but sometimes you need to use the Greek to get a better view of what's being stated. Because some of these words can be used in a change of belief. They can be used to mean this, or they might mean something altogether different. Here's the case here in verse 14. It says, If anyone among you sick? Well, the word that's used here is the Greek word astane. Now this word has can be two meanings. It can be a person that's physically sick, some sort of debilitation physically, or it can be weak, weary, someone that's suffering. And this deals with more emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Keep that in mind because we're going to go and look at another passage that uses this exact same word. There's a lot of times, probably slightly most often, it's used to convey weakness rather than an actual physical sickness. One such example is in 2 Corinthians 13. Paul is saying, Since you are seeking for proof of Christ who speaks in me and who is not weak towards you. Well, this word weak. It's the same Greek word astane. This clearly does not mean sick. This means weak, weary, not strong, to be weak. That's what this word means. So the word can be used to be meaning not strong or weak, kind of struggling a little bit, or can be used to being physically sick. And I'm going to make my contention in James 5 that this is referring to a weakness, not being strong, not physically, but more spiritually. We also see this brought up again in Romans 14. He says, Now accept the one who is weak in faith, not sick in faith. And it's the same Greek word. The word is astane, to be sick, to be weak. So this clearly cannot be sick physically. So this word most often is conveyed as spiritually weak or emotionally suffering in that way, to be weak, not physically sick. So let's go back to James 5 and let's also gain a greater context. He says, If anyone among you is suffering, then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? This is be weak. Now follow my contention. If this means physical sickness, then we've got a problem, because if we keep reading, then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. Question, if this is a physical sickness, then what is the promise here? The promise here is that the prayer offered in faith, if this prayer is going to save me, he says that this prayer will, the prayer offered in faith, will restore the one who is sick. Is that to claim that this is some sort of physical sickness? Well, if that's the case, then the scripture says that they will, this prayer will restore that person will make this person better. Well, that would mean that every time that this prayer happens and it's offered in, as some believe is stated, offered in faith, they will be healed. Well, what's the big problem with that? All of us know of people who have been prayed for by a great many of people and did not get healed. Are we going to say that every time that that happened, that when the person didn't get healed, there was no faith? Because there are times in the Bible where someone had faith, prayed and did not get healed. Most notably, Paul. Paul has faith, clearly Paul has faith. He prays for something to be removed three times and it doesn't happen. There are times when others are not healed. Timothy, trochymuses, other people in the Bible who don't have a, who are physically healed, but don't get healed. And there are people around them who certainly have faith. So this could not mean that a prayer in faith will almost, certainly not almost, but will definitely heal that person. No, the word that's speaking, that's spoken of here is not to be taken as physically sick, it's to be taken as weak, spiritually so. Let's go back and see if this makes sense. I'm going to point you to other points in this passage that don't get highlighted and we should highlight it. Is anyone among you sick? I told you this word, astanae, does not mean physically sick. It's being weary. So take it this way. If a person is spiritually weary, if a person is struggling, the person is suffering, then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith, I'm going to come back to this in a second, will restore the one who is sick. Now this word here, this Greek word, let's go to the other side, this Greek word over here is kanata. So let's go see what this word is. This is not a physical sickness. This is being weak. This is being weary. It's only to use one other time in the New Testament. The only other time it is used is in Hebrews, in Hebrews 12.3. So let's go there and Hebrews 12.3, for consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary. The same word, kanata, or kanata, it means the exact same thing here as it does there. The only two times it is used and it means to be weary. This does not mean be physically sick, so that you will not grow physically sick and lose heart. No, this is to grow weary. And of course, that's how it's translated here. So that same word in James 5 is speaking of a weariness, not being strong, spiritually speaking. So let's go back to James 5 and he says, And the prayer often faith will restore the one who is weary and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven. So he's speaking, look what he's speaking of, that the Lord will raise him up. He will be restored and the word that's used here so that we can know that this is definitive. This is going to happen in the future. It's so say, this is a future active indicative. So this is going to happen. And so would the prayer in faith or of faith or the faith that in a second, if this is true, does that make sense now? Yeah, it does. Because if a person is struggling in regards to their salvation in regards to their faith, if the prayer is offered, that prayer would restore them or will save them. I think he's speaking of salvifically. Why do I say so? Well, let's go to something else that's not hidden here, but it's in here. It is the prayer that's offered in faith. I said before that there is a difference between a word that is a noun or a word that is a verb. This would seem like it's a verb or an adjective. It's not. This is a noun. This is and the prayer offered. It says in faith will restore. Well, look what it says. Ka'e'eku, which is and the prayer, taste pistails. This taste is a, isn't the genitive, the prayer of, but the problem is this is a noun. So the prayer offered of the faith. So the prayer of the faith, this faith, what is the faith? It's pointing to something. That's an article, genitive, the prayer of the faith. Well, what faith? Well, what we believe. The verb is what you're doing, having faith, believing. The noun is the faith, the belief. This is our tenets. And so that particular faith, that particular prayer of that faith, that's what's going to restore. Well, isn't that what we believe anyway? Anyone that offers up a prayer of the faith, that is what we believe. That person will be restored. So this passage is not speaking of someone who is struggling physical that will be saved. This prayer is speaking of someone who is struggling emotionally, spiritually, who is weak. That prayer, that definitely will save. There is no 99% of the time or 80% of the time or 50% of the time. No, 100% of the time of this prayer that's offered of the faith. That prayer, that works 100% of the time because that is a genuine prayer. Why? Because it is this prayer of the faith, the faith that we believe, which is why it says that if he has or she has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Why does that make sense? Because this particular prayer for this salvific prayer, this prayer of faith, anyone that offers that prayer, what will they receive? Salvation that naturally is accompanied with forgiveness. That's what he says next. He says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Now, if we were to go a little further on in the passage to make the point even more so that we know that we're speaking about salvation, still in James 5, notice what he brings up. James 5, my brother, if any among you strays from the truth, strays from the truth, and one turns him back, let him know that the world turns a sinner from there of his ways will save his soul from death. So we're talking about the same topic. We're talking about salvation. We're talking about this spiritual weakness. This is what James is talking about. He's not going from physical healing to now salvation. No, it's the exact same thought that's carried forth in what James is speaking up. And so the problem that can be, here's what can cause some problems, when there are people who are saying that if you pray, if you anoint them with oil, if you pray, then they are definitely going to be healed of any sort of sickness. If they've got a tumor, if they've got diabetes, if they've got some sort of kidney issue, what have you, you pray over them, you anoint them, well then according to this passage, if you're going to invoke this passage, well then they will be healed. But that's not what the passage is talking about, which is now why we can understand why so often this prayer is offered up to someone who's physically hurting and they don't get healed. Well, what the could end up doing is causing someone to doubt. It can affect someone's faith. Well, does God love me? Am I really saved? What's happening here? And no, God does not intend to heal everybody. He does heal. He is a healer. He always has been and always will be. But that doesn't mean that he's going to heal everybody, nor does it mean that he's going to heal even every believer who asks for it. No, there's no passages that are telling us that, especially this passage. But what we do know for a fact, 100% of the time, that if you offer this faithful prayer up to him and you are spiritually weak, or as Jesus said, heavy laden and burden, then he will give you rest. He will, as the word says, so say, which is I will save. He will save. He will do that 100% of the time. So my friend, I know this passage can cause a little bit of confusion. I know this passage has been used incorrectly at times, but this is absolutely, as far as I can tell, the way that this passage is meant is what James is speaking of in the first place in this chapter. And there's just a nice, smooth cohesion with the first part, the middle part, chapter five, with the ending. Speaking of salvation, speaking of a spiritual healing. Amen.