Confess therefore your offences to one another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed. [The] fervent supplication of the righteous [man] has much power.
Someone is sick, someone is weighed down by sin, and the verse tells them to open their hearts to each other and pray — with healing promised. It raises three questions at once: who do we confess to, how far does the healing reach, and why does one person's prayer carry weight with God?
This confession runs between believers, and it runs both ways. One writer points out that no office stands in the middle of it:
We may note that it is not confession to the elders that is spoken of. That would have been confidence in men — official confidence. God wants divine love at work in everyone. Confession to one another shows the condition of the church. God wants a church where love reigns. He wants believers so near to Him that they can treat the wrongdoer with the same grace they have found in Him.
Another writer sees the silence about elders as deliberate, guarding souls from superstition:
Scripture carefully avoids urging confession to the elders. I have no doubt this is the far-seeing wisdom of God. He loves souls and hates superstition.
This call does not depend on any official order being in place, so it survives every breakdown:
However ruined the state of God's church may be, we can always confess our faults to one another and pray for one another, so that we may be healed. This needs no official order in place. It does need humility, trust between believers, and love.
The word "therefore" ties the confession back to sickness. On this reading, the illness in view is traceable to particular sins:
"Therefore, confess your sins to one another... that you may be healed." This shows clearly that the sickness in view comes from specific sins. When the sins are confessed and judged, grace steps in, and God in mercy heals.
Commentators differ on how far "healed" reaches. Some widen it beyond the body:
So it is fitting for believers to confess their offences to one another, as matters that need prayerful help. The healing here may be mainly recovery from illness. But spiritual recovery is just as necessary.
The verse is not permission to tell anyone anything. Its wording sets limits:
But this is limited to two cases. One is a Christian who has wronged someone, going to that person to ask forgiveness. The other is a burdened heart opening up to some "righteous man" whose prayers it wants... It does not teach a Christian confessing to an unbeliever. It does not teach confessing in a group meeting where many present may not be believers at all.
Even within those limits, applying it calls for judgment:
Every general rule has its exceptions. More than that: every principle needs wisdom in how it is applied. Nothing removes that need.
One writer questions the older wording "the effectual fervent prayer... avails much" as saying nothing at all:
To say that an "effectual" prayer accomplishes much says nothing new. If it is effectual, then of course it works... The key points of the Scripture are probably these. (a) The one praying is a righteous man. (b) His prayer is energetic — not a half-hearted, lazy performance, but the prayer of someone who means it... (c) Prayer of this kind really does have much power.
The power is not in the words but in the standing and nearness of the one praying:
The man who is righteous in practice, by grace, is near to God. He has nothing to settle with God about his own sin. Unsettled sin would keep his heart at a distance. His heart is free instead to come near to God, in keeping with His holy nature, and to pray for others.
Because of this, character and answered prayer cannot be separated:
The power of prayer is never separate from the character of the man who prays. Yet God is compassionate, and He can hear any man in his hour of desperate need.
- Confess — confession goes "one to another," never to an official. Confession to elders would put trust in men instead of letting love work among all.
- Mutual — this needs no office and no order. It stands even when everything else has broken down. All it asks is humility, trust between believers, and love.
- Healed — where sickness follows specific sins, confession and self-judgment open the way for God to heal in mercy. Writers differ on whether spiritual recovery is also in view.
- Careful — it covers wrong done to another. It covers a burdened heart opening up to one whose prayers it wants. It does not cover telling a mixed crowd.
- Righteous — the power belongs to the man with nothing unsettled between himself and God. His heart is free to plead for others. Prayer's power is never separate from the character of the one praying.
Elias was a man of like passions to us, and he prayed with prayer that it should not rain; and it did not rain upon the earth three years and six months;
James backs up his call to pray by pointing to Elijah, and insists that Elijah's nature was the same as ours. The verse also tells us something the Old Testament never records. The long drought under Ahab began with a private prayer, not a public announcement.
The comparison is not an aside. It is why James brings Elijah in at all.
First, the Holy Spirit encourages us to pray. He does it by reminding our hearts that Elijah, who did such wonders, had the same nature as ours. It is as if He said, "There is an example for you; see what is open to you!"
What set him apart was not his make-up but his walk.
James reminds us that Elijah "was a man with a nature like ours." Like us, he was surrounded by human weakness and human frailty. What a comforting lesson this can teach us! We too, like him, can be men of power, if we, despite the evil around us, walk in the awareness that God is the living God.
Elijah appears in 1 Kings without introduction, announcing the drought to Ahab. James supplies the missing scene.
Verse 17 is especially interesting. The Old Testament never mentions that he prayed it might not rain, though it gives us full details of how he prayed for rain at the end of the three and a half years in 1 Kings 18. The opening verse of 1 Kings 17 brings him in abruptly, telling Ahab that it would not rain. So this verse in James gives us a glimpse of scenes before his public appearance — scenes of private and personal dealings with God. Though he had the same nature as ours, he was righteous, and he burned with passion for the glory of God. So God heard him, and he knew he was heard. That assurance let him tell Ahab confidently what God was going to do.
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Elijah's power in public started on his knees in private. And what looks like a cruel prayer makes sense once you see what he saw.
Prayer in private was another great secret of his power in public. He could stand before the wicked king because he had knelt before the living God. His was no mere formal prayer that achieves nothing, but an earnest prayer that achieves much. A terrible prayer to have to put up to the living God about the people of God! Yet Elijah looked at the condition of the people and could see no recognition of God anywhere in the land. He judged it better for them to suffer the years of drought, if this would turn them to God, than to enjoy prosperity in defiance of God and go on to a worse judgment. Zeal for God and love for the people lay behind this solemn prayer.
He did not invent this prayer. It matched what God had already said He would do if Israel turned to other gods.
Prayer that God accepts must rest on the Word of God. The prophet no doubt remembered Deuteronomy 11:16-17: "Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and then the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain." With such words before him, the distressed prophet cried out from the depth of his heart, "O God, stop the rain!"
What God's people have lost since the beginning has not changed the Lord Himself.
James recalls the example of Elijah, a man with the same nature as ours. Yet in answer to his prayer it did not rain for three years and six months. The church has lost its outward order, but the power, love, and faithfulness of the Lord are unchanged. He may let us feel that, through the sin of the church, we are not as we were at the beginning. Still, where God gives faith, His answer will never fail.
Prayer with that kind of power does not appear overnight.
This can only come from long inward dealing with God, from much secret communion, and from a close walk with Him. Not all are called to be Elijahs, but all may seek grace to become diligent in prayer and intercession.
- Same nature. Elijah's power was never in his make-up; he shared our weaknesses, so the door he went through stands open to us.
- Secret first. The public word to Ahab was the second half of the story — James shows us the private praying that produced it.
- Word-shaped. He asked for what God had already said He would do. Prayer God accepts rests on God's own Word.
- Love behind it. He asked for drought out of zeal for God and love for a people heading toward worse than famine.
- Answer certain. He knew God had heard him, and told Ahab so — and where God gives faith, His answer still never fails.