What is “the prayer of faith [that] will save the sick”?
Updated: Dec 17, 2022
“And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” James 5:15.
As James is laying out some foundational guidelines for how elders are to pray for the sick amongst their flock, we are introduced to an idea of a particular prayer that comes with a guarantee of healing attached. What is this “prayer of faith [that] will save the sick” and how do we seek it?
First of all, this prayer, in this context, is a prayer for elders to perform for their sick (though this need not rule out the possibility of others praying similar prayers of faith). What can initially be deduced from this point is that this prayer is very much for today. These are not instructions addressed to apostles or to those with particular gifts of healing; they are given to elders, an office of continuing leadership given to the church that continues through to today.
Whether one might argue that the charismatic gift of healing ended with the passing of the Apostolic Era and subsequent settling of the New Testament Church and completed canon of Scripture or whether it continues to today is quite irrelevant at this point – either way, this ‘prayer of faith’ remains for today.
Secondly, this ‘prayer of faith’ does not mean that the individual praying (or recipient of the prayer, for that matter) is required to have a certain amount of faith that God will indeed heal, as per the faith to move mountains (1 Cor. 13:2). Even the Apostles and others in the church with a ministry of healing were not able to heal all sicknesses, or save all from death – so could a wavering faith on behalf of such people really be the cause for such apparent inconsistency?
A key to understanding what is meant by the term ‘prayer of faith’ is to realise that the Greek word that James used for prayer was in fact a unique word, not used anywhere else in Scripture.[1] It is a word that, as well as being a reference to prayer, carries the meaning ‘loyalty to a vow’.[2] We can then translate the full phrase as ‘a prayer of faith in loyalty to a vow’ – but whose, then, is the vow?
When we understand the vow to be belonging to God we are subsequently left with a complete understanding of this “prayer of faith [that] will save the sick”:
God gives the individual praying the clear conviction that what is being requested (in the case of James’ context, it is healing) is indeed God’s will to perform. The ‘prayer of faith’, therefore, is a prayer offered in loyalty to God’s revealed will with the faith that God will perform what He has promised.
We can see an example of this very thing in the following story, relating to the revival on the Isle of Lewis in 1949:
Duncan Campbell, a young Scottish evangelist, was invited to come and preach at Barvas Free Church on the Isle of Lewis in response to the church’s seeking of revival. The revival had in fact already started there, as a spirit of prayer had powerfully come upon many church members, including two elderly sisters, Peggy and Christine Smith.
The invitation to come and preach was turned down by Duncan Campbell as he had already accepted a call to preach elsewhere at that time. When the Barvas minister, Rev. MacKay, relayed this disappointing news to the two sisters, Peggy Smith replied, “Mr MacKay, that is what man is saying. But God has said something else, and he will be here within a fortnight.”
Ten days later, Duncan Campbell was on the Isle of Lewis and preaching at Barvas Free Church – where he remained for over three years![3]
Peggy Smith had been praying for the revival for many weeks, and, as part of her praying, God had given to her the clear conviction that Duncan Campbell was to come and minister to them – and it was under his preaching that the floodgates of the revival would truly open in full force.
God had revealed His will to Peggy Smith by giving her the conviction that Duncan Campbell was to come, yet she continued to pray for it whilst trusting that God would indeed bring His will to pass – and this is the ‘prayer of faith’. James uses it in the context of healing the sick, though as we can see with the example of Peggy Smith that it is not limited just to that.
Does God give His people such clear revelation and conviction of His will in this way often? Perhaps not for many of us, though it certainly does happen, and I do believe were our relationship with our Lord more like the relationship of Peggy and Christine Smith with the Lord (as one of constant intimacy and devotion) that it would happen to us a bit more than it currently does.
James 5:16 concludes James’ section on praying for one another with the wonderful promise that “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much” – that is to say, brings much good to us from our ever-gracious God. What is clear here is that our praying does not just avail everything and anything that we ask.
We can understand, in conclusion, that healing (or any other request of God) can only be certain where God has given a clear revelation and conviction that this is His will to perform, to which our response is a prayer of loyalty to God’s will and of faith that God will perform what He has vowed to us to do.
