The Lord for the Body

Is any sick among you? 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. JAMES 5:14

This chapter must be handled with more care than any other in the book. Please read it to the end. The cautions are not an afterthought; they are part of the teaching.

The silent years

In 1879 Murray’s voice failed. For about two years the most sought-after preacher in his church could not preach. It was a long trial for a man whose whole calling was to speak, and it led him to examine the teaching on divine healing then spreading among evangelicals in Europe and America. In 1882 he went to London, to a home where the sick were received for prayer, and he returned with his voice restored. He resumed his ministry and carried it on for another three decades.

Out of that experience came the book Divine Healing, first published in the 1880s and later in English. It is a series of short chapters, most of them expositions of a particular text, and it is written with his usual warmth and directness. It is also, of all his books, the one that most needs to be read with discernment.

What he taught

Murray’s central claim is that healing for the body belongs within the redemption Christ purchased. He built this on Matthew’s use of Isaiah 53.

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. MATTHEW 8:17

From this and from the plain command of James 5, Murray argued that the believer may look to Christ for the healing of the body as truly as for the forgiveness of sins. The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Lord is for the body. Sickness, he taught, is often connected with sin and used by God as chastening, and healing is to be sought with confession and faith. He urged the church to recover a practice it had largely abandoned: the elders praying over the sick and anointing them in the name of the Lord.

And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. JAMES 5:15

What he said about doctors

Murray’s view of medicine was more nuanced than is sometimes supposed, and it is only fair to set out what the book actually says. The chapter Jesus and the Doctors begins: “We may be thankful to God for having given us doctors.” Their calling, he writes, is one of the most noble, and some of them are zealous servants of Christ. Elsewhere, asked whether the use of remedies excludes the prayer of faith, he answers no — for, he says, the experience of a large number of believers testifies that in answer to their prayers “God has often blessed the use of remedies, and made them a means of healing.”

But the book goes further. Murray held that healing received directly from Christ, without medical means, was the better way — more spiritually fruitful, and more fully the fulfilment of James 5. He wrote that healing through physicians, even believing ones, can leave the patient further from God than before, and he encouraged the sick who had faith to look to Christ alone. In the chapter The Will of God he argued that a prayer for healing which adds if it be Thy will is praying with submission but is not the prayer of faith, because Scripture has already made God’s will for healing plain.

Even in this book he gives thanks for doctors, and nothing in it condemns the believer who uses them. It is sometimes said that in later life he moderated his position further; this companion will not claim more about his later views than can be shown. The book is what he left us, and the book is what we must weigh.

What is genuinely biblical here

Much in Murray’s emphasis is plainly scriptural and has been lost in many churches. God heals, and nothing in Scripture retires Him from healing. James 5 is a standing instruction to the church, and a great many congregations ignore it. The body matters to God: He made it, His Son took one, and it will be raised. And Christ’s compassion for the sick fills the Gospels.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 1 CORINTHIANS 6:19

Murray was also right that sickness can be an occasion for searching the heart. James himself links the prayer for healing with confession. A believer who is ill loses nothing by asking God whether there is anything He wishes to show him.

Where it must be qualified

Now the necessary corrections, stated without softening, because people have been hurt here.

Scripture does not promise healing in every case. Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20). Epaphroditus was sick nigh unto death (Philippians 2:27). Timothy had often infirmities, and Paul’s counsel was a practical remedy, not a rebuke (1 Timothy 5:23). And Paul himself asked three times for his thorn to be removed, and was refused.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

Sickness is not always tied to the sick person’s sin. Jesus explicitly denied it of the man born blind (John 9:3), and the book of Job exists partly to rebuke those who assume it. Any suggestion that continued illness proves unconfessed sin or weak faith is cruel, and it adds guilt to suffering.

Praying if it be Thy will is not unbelief. It is the prayer of the Son of God in Gethsemane, who had more faith than anyone who has ever lived.

O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. MATTHEW 26:39

And medicine is not a lesser way. Luke was the beloved physician. Isaiah applied a lump of figs to Hezekiah’s boil in the very story in which God added fifteen years to his life. Scripture nowhere sets treatment and trust against each other. Nothing in this chapter or in Murray’s book should lead any reader to refuse, delay or stop medical care. Pray, and see your doctor.

How to hold it

Held with these corrections, the substance of Murray’s teaching is worth recovering. Pray boldly for the sick. Obey James 5. Expect God to act, and leave the outcome with Him. When He heals, give Him the glory. When He does not, do not conclude that He has not answered. The final healing of the body waits for the resurrection, when this mortal shall put on immortality.

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body. PHILIPPIANS 3:21

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Pray specifically and expectantly for someone who is ill this week, without promising them an outcome God has not promised.

2. If your church never practises James 5:14, ask your leaders why.

3. If you have been made to feel that your illness is a verdict on your faith or proof of hidden sin, reject that. It is not the teaching of Scripture.

4. Take your medicine and keep your appointments. Trust and treatment are not rivals.

5. Pray Christ’s Gethsemane prayer about the thing you most want God to change, and mean both halves of it.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You bore our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, and You are still moved with compassion for the suffering.

Teach me to pray boldly for the sick, and to leave the outcome in Your hands.

Where You heal, let me give You the glory. Where You do not, let me hear You say that Your grace is sufficient.

Guard me from ever adding to another’s burden by suggesting that their sickness is their own fault. And keep my eyes on the day when You will raise these bodies in glory. Amen.