Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - James 5:14 - 5:14
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Some observe, 1. That St. James doth not say, "Is any man sick? let him pray;" but let him send for others to pray with him, and for him: plainly supposing, that the sick man is very unfit to pray himself, or to pray for himself; in other afflictions let him pray, but in sickness let others pray for him, he having enough to do to grapple with his grief, and to conflict with his affliction: a diseased body unfits the mind for holy duties.
Yet observe, 2. It is one thing to want a heart in sickness to pray for ourselves, and another thing to want ability to pray for ourselves. Many desire the prayers of others in sickness, who wanted hearts to pray for themselves in health. This is a sad symptom that the soul is as sick, yea, more dangerously sick than the body. Add to this, that the prayers of others are very rarely beneficial to us, unless we pray, or have a desire to pray, for ourselves.
Observe, 3. The sick man's duty, not only to desire prayer, but to send to the elders of the church to pray for him, and with him.
Quest. But if the sick neglect to send, may the minister neglect to go, if he knows of the sickness?
Ans. Doubtless we ought to go, if we know of it, whether they send or not, for they want our prayers and help most when they desire it least; and by refusing to go, we may lose the last, and perhaps the best opportunity of doing good unto them. If our people, through stupidity and insensibleness, omit their duty in sending for us, God forbid, that either through pride or sluggishness, we should neglect our duty in going to them; too, too often we never hear our people are sick, till the bell tells us they are dead: if therefore by any means we gain the knowlege of their condition, let us apply ourselves with all our might to their condition, lest God be more angry with us for not going to them, than with them for not sending to us, imitating our Lord, who was found of them that sought him not.
Some make this anointing with oil to be a medicinal practice among the Jews, and that they administered it physically: but why then must the elders administer it? The physician might have done it as well as they. True, but the elders are sent for, that they, applying this corporeal remedy, might join with it spiritual physic of prayer, good admonition and comfort. As if a sick person should send for the minister at his taking of physic, that he might then pray with him, counsel and comfort him. Others make this anointing with oil a religious act. Christ empowered his apostles to work miracles, and, amongst others, they had the gift of healing the sick, whom they anointed in the name of the Lord, or by the authority of the Lord; but the gospel being sufficiently confirmed, this gift of healing is ceased, and therewith the rite of anointing; therefore the church of Rome keep up an idle ceremony in anointing the sick, unless they had a miraculous power to heal the sick: to keep up the rite, unless they could produce the effect; to pretend to the anointing, without the power of healing, is a mere piece of pageantry; besides, they anoint those that are given over for dead, and the apostle's anointing for the benefit of the living, as appears by the following verse.