James Ch 5

I spoke last night at our Bible Study - which always comprises a 1 hour in-depth exegetical sermon.

It semed to go OK generally, with a few comments from the floor. At one point it started to get out of hand with a subsidiary discussion over whethre Job did or did not lack faith, but I managed to drag it back to James.

I annoyed some people by teaching that the oil is the medical treatment of the day, not necessarily a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and that it's the prayer of faith, not the oil, the heals. We don't do magic with lotions and potions.

But I had a great time with "The prayer of a righteous man is poweful and effective" - holding up a can of RAID insecticide "Kills bugs dead" to emphasise power and effectiveness, and also emphasising that being righteous is our status as forgiven sinners, not something that we attain by efforts of holiness, and so therefore all of us (in that particular congregation) are righteous and therefore all of us are powerful and effective in our prayers. So we got quite excited!

I also showed that the NIV - the 'normally incorrect version' - misrepresents Elijah's prayer as 'earnest', when really the Greek says he prayed a prayer - a normal human prayer. The emphasis is on the power of a simple prayer, and certainly not that the more energy we put into our prayers the better they are; becasue that's what the priests of Baal thought!

There are subtle hints in James that it may be possible to lose salvation, and this is a topic of intense debate at our church at present with some clergy saying once saved always saved you can't be un-born-again, and others saying that salvation is by faith in the present continuous tense and that you have to persevere to the end to be saved. So we are likely to have a special session on the topic in the next month or so and I decided to refer to that session rather than trying to answer all those questions now. Personally, I do believe in 'assurance'. Tom Wright is good on this subject, showing that in the present we are justified by faith and this is an accurate prediction of our future judgement by works thanks to the Holy Spirit producing good works in us. Something like that anyway.