Recently, a fellow pastor and I were discussing fruitful ways we have discovered to serve the sick in our congregations. Yet my friend was surprised by two narratives of ministering to the sick that I recounted for him.
First, I spoke about one of my congregants who was bedridden with a cancer that began in her pancreas and rapidly spread throughout her body. Following one Sunday morning service, a deacon and I journeyed to her house to pray over her and anoint her with oil. That bedside service was incredibly meaningful to this precious saint who departed to be with Christ just a few days later. Next, I recalled a certain church member who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She too requested that the elders and deacons pray over her and anoint her with oil; and we honored her request. Shortly thereafter, she was healed and is still active in the congregation today.
Unfortunately, many in our modern age, and some important leaders in church history, have found the passage in James that prescribes anointing of the sick with oil in the name of the Lord (5:14) to be superstitious.[1] Oil cannot heal the body, after all. But we must remember that God is actually the one who brings healing, not the prayer or the oil—why, then, employ either? Believers must not dispense with portions of Scripture that sound superstitious or difficult to our modern ears, and that includes anointing the sick with oil in the name of the Lord.
To be certain, the doctrine of anointing the sick with oil has been distorted and abused by many Christian movements past and present. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church restricted the rite—formerly referred to as extreme unction—to those nearing death, from the Medieval Era until Vatican II.[2] More recently, charismatic televangelists urge their followers to use anointing oil for every affliction imaginable. As an example, Joseph Prince “used the anointing oil around the perimeter of his daughter’s bedroom to keep bees out when she was very young.”[3]
Yet the misuse and abuse of the rite ought not discourage faithful elders from following the apostolic imperative to anoint the sick with oil. Below, I shall posit four ways that elders praying over the sick and anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord has continuing practical and theological significance for the church today. I will build my case on the instituting verses from James:
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven (Jas. 5:14–15, ESV).
(1) The Community
To begin, praying over and anointing the sick with oil serves an important role in binding the members of the ecclesial community together even in the midst of sickness. Notice the communal overtones in James’ phrases “among you” and “elders of the church.” James affirms ill church members as part of the church. Such an affirmation is doubly important when we consider Douglas J. Moo’s observation: “Since the elders are summoned to the sick person, we may assume that the sickness is serious enough to restrict the mobility of the sufferer.”[4] That is, the sick person was most likely inhibited from gathering with the believing community.
Now, one’s separation from the local church is good for neither oneself nor one’s fellow church members. Consequently, as Kurt A. Richardson puts it, “those who have been recognized by the local church (ekklesia) as its leaders (cf. 1 Tim. 3:1; 5:7) [go and] represent the assembly in their act of believing prayer before the Lord.”[5] When the sick could not gather with the church, the church went to the sick through the representation of its leaders. “By using the term ekklesia,” writes Richardson, “James showed that through the elders the church maintains its embrace around even the sick who have been quarantined from the gathered community of believers.”[6] Of course, the elders could go and pray without oil; why, then, the call to anoint? More on that late later, but first we will turn to the act of praying itself.
(2) The Call to Heaven
Many commentators are quick to point out that prayer is James’ primary focus in the broader passage—not anointing with oil.[7] Indeed, surrounding the prayer for physical healing, James calls for the sufferers, the cheerful, the sinners, and all to pray (Jas. 5:13, 16). Moreover, he extolls “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man” like Elijah (5:17, 18; KJV). However, the importance of prayer does not negate the importance of anointing with oil any more than confessing sins to one another negates the importance of praying for one another (5:16).
The relationship between oil and prayer is a both/and rather than an either/or relationship. As Ralph P. Martin cogently demonstrates, the fact that the rite is both prayerful and done in the name of the Lord “underscores the confidence that God is the source of any healing that is effected.”[8] With that principle in mind, we are ready to speak about the oil itself as a sign of the Comforter—the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:16).
(3) The Comforter
James doubtlessly supposed that his Jewish-Christian readership possessed many presuppositions regarding the pervasive and widely varied use of oil in the Old Testament and first century Judaism. Most importantly, ancient Judaism presupposed a close connection between anointing with oil and the Holy Spirit. “Anointing [with oil],” as Thomas Oden summarizes the Biblical data, “is an expression of the Spirit’s comforting presence, seal, blessing, and commissioning. . . . Oil was employed for many uses in healing, illuminating, comforting, commissioning, and anointing” all of which the Spirit of God works to do as well.”[9] When James writes of anointing the sick with oil in the name of the Lord, then, he likely maintains a close association between oil and the Holy Spirit.
If oil symbolizes the Holy Spirit, then anointing the sick with oil is a tangible and external sign of an intangible and inward grace. When sick believers receive an anointing with oil in the name of the Lord, they are assured of the Holy Spirit’s comfort and intercession in a time of great weakness (Rom. 8:26). Just as importantly, they are assured that the same Spirit “who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to [their] mortal bodies” (8:11). Surely the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can cure a physical malady that has not yet resulted in death. Indeed, James says that God “will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up” (Jas. 5:15).[10] Still, we might ask: When will the Holy Spirit brings healing?
(4) The Cure: Current or Coming?
Clearly, not everyone over whom elders pray and anoint with oil receives immediate healing. Does that fact mean that they did not have enough faith, or that they lacked fervency and righteousness? Richardson keenly cautions against such explanations:
The result of prayer is always dependent on the will of God to heal in a particular case. Such healing points to resurrection and reconciliation with God and is never an end in itself. Healing then is a sign of the complete saving work of God: the demise of sin and death and the restoration of the body on the last day. Of course, not every believer receives the healing requested, and not every believer is healed in the same way as another. But all healing stimulates hope in the God who will one day remove all causes of sickness and death.[11]
The believer has every reason to hope that Christ, through the Spirit, will bring healing immediately. Indeed, we must have faith that He is able to do so. Yet simultaneously, we must recognize that, if He does bring such healing, it is only an inbreaking of God’s Kingdom into the present—a foretaste of the New Creation when believers will truly and finally experience salvation and being raised up.
Conclusion
Earlier, I spoke of anointing two ladies with oil in the name of the Lord. One of the ladies experienced God’s gracious healing in this life while the other’s body presently awaits healing at the resurrection. For both ladies, however, being anointed with oil was a wonderful reminder, for them and the church, of the Holy Spirit’s constant comfort as well as His transformative, healing power in a broken creation. Churches ought not rob themselves of the blessing that comes through this Biblically prescribed practice.
[1]Interestingly, John Calvin believed that oil was sanctioned for use only in the Apostolic Era and that prayer is the only continuing imperative: “I indeed allow that it was used as a sacrament by the disciples of Christ, (for I cannot agree with those who think that it was medicine;) but as the reality of this sign continued only for a time in the church, the symbol also must have been only for a time. . . .” (Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen [Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.], 322–23).
[2]Bruce T. Morrill, Divine Worship and Human Healing: Liturgical Theology at the Margins of Life and Death (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 159–63. As Morrill ably demonstrates, the Roman Catholic Church on this side of Vatican II has made great strides towards correcting the misuse of this rite (163ff).
[3]Joseph Prince, “Anointing Oil for Healing and Protection,” last modified February 16, 2020, https://www.josephprince.com/sermon-notes/anointing-oil-for-healing-and-protection.
[4]Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, The Pillar and New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 238. The fact that the congregant is likely isolated from the church indicates that the sickness is rather severe. Thus, anointing with oil should not be done flippantly, and of course it does not have to be done every time someone is ill or weak. For more, see Craig L. Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, James, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). They write: “Given the overall teaching of the NT, in which healing is not consistently paired with anointing, we should not take this one verse as mandating that oil must accompany all prayers for the sick. At the same time, there is no reason not to implement a practice like this one for some of the most chronic or life-threatening illnesses that church members face” (242–43).
[5]Kurt A. Richardson, James, The New American Commentary: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (Nashville: B&H, 1997), 231–32.
[6]Richardson, James, 232. More to the point, Morrill explains that “the church’s sacramental service to the sick and the elderly reorients and asserts their role in the community’s life. The anointed person receives an empowering call to practice faith as trust in God, oneself, and others through the challenges of loneliness, feelings of abandonment or loss, stripping of self-sufficiency, or at times even dignity due to weakened bodily or mental functions, ceding of status or sense of worth on the basis of one’s productivity and more” (Divine Worship and Human Healing, 179).
[7]E.g., Calvin, Catholic Epistles, 323; David P. Nystrom, James, The NIV Application Commentary: From Biblical Text to Contemporary Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 306; George M. Stulac, James, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 180–83.
[8]Ralph P. Martin, James, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 48 (Waco, TX: Word, 1988), 208.
[9]Thomas C. Oden, Classical Christianity: A Systematic Theology (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 535. Oden also probes the way that oil was used to anoint leaders before the Spirit of the Lord came upon them (Classical Christianity, 535–36).
[10]Of course, James says that the “prayer of faith” will save and heal, but God is the sole Agent who brings healing.
[11]Richardson, James, 236. Moo argues that, while Richardson’s point is theologically sound, he “robs the present text of its real point. Believers who struggle with illness can, indeed, be confident that God will heal them in the end. But it does not require a special visitation from the elders nor an anointing with oil to accomplish that. It is, as it were, part of their salvation itself, guaranteed them as a gift of grace by the Lord. James plainly envisages a much more immediate result” (The Letter of James, 244). I question Moo’s reasoning behind saying believers do not need a special reminder of God’s final healing in such times. Would he also say that we do not need a special reminder of God’s grace in the waters of baptism or in the bread and cup of the Lord’s Table? After all, we already know that our sins have been forgiven through faith in Christ.
Recent Comments