James 5:13-18 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

The key to this hard passage seems to lie in the climax, the example of Elijah, who in 1 Kings 17:1; 1 Kings 18:41 ff., is not said to have prayed for drought or for rain. His prayer is in the phrase before whom I stand a life in the Presence, bringing with it an instinctive knowledge of God's will; cf. Amos 3:7. The elders, therefore, of a faithful congregation may expect a Divine impulse prompting them to ask for physical recovery when God wills it; we may also believe that such united prayer is a real instrument in God's hands, just as much as the application of remedies like oil (cf. Isaiah 1:6; Luke 10:34). The prayer of faith, of an instinctive and unquestioning conviction, becomes a curative agency by the mysterious power that links mind and body, the power which Jesus used in His miracles of healing. Forgiveness and physical healing are joined here as in the story of Mark 2:1-12. The assurance that the faithful community may expect such guidance was learned by James from the Lord Himself (Matthew 18:19 f.). A primary condition of this mutual help was frankness and free confession of faults one to another (not to one superior individual), that prayer might be definite and intelligent. A good man's inspired (lit. - inwrought-') supplication has mighty power. Prayer, then, is not our asking God for something we think we need, but the establishment of unhindered contact of the human will and the Divine the completion of an electric circuit, as it were, which can exert immense power. And the best of it all is that such a cosmic force is not reserved for supermen, as we might think Elijah to be. Stress is laid on his having been a man of the same nature as ourselves the power is for us all, if we will only believe (Mark 5:36). That the drought of 1 Kings 17 f. lasted three and a half years was an inference from 1 Kings 18:1, found also in Luke 4:25.