And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sings, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.
—James 5:15-16
Here, as in other scriptures, the pardon of sins and the healing of sickness are closely united. James declared that a pardon of sins would be granted with the healing. For this reason, he desired to see confession of sin accompanying the prayer that claims healing. Unconfessed sin presents an obstacle to the prayer of faith. When called to treat a patient, a physician should first diagnose the cause of the disease. Our God also goes back to the primary cause of sickness—sin. It is the patient’s part to confess the sin; it is God’s part to grant the pardon that removes this first cause, so that healing can take place.
Sickness can be a consequence of sin. Often God permits sickness in order to show us our faults and purify us from them. The one who is sick is not necessarily a greater sinner than another who is in health. On the contrary, it is often the holiest whom God chastens, as we see from the example of Job. Sickness is also not always intended to check some fault that we can easily determine. Its main purpose is to draw the attention of the sick one to that which remains in him of the “old man” (Romans 6:6) and of all that hinders him from a life consecrated to his God.
The first step that the sick one has to take, therefore, to let the Holy Spirit of God probe his heart and convict him of sin. This will be followed by humiliation, a decision to break with sin, and confession. To confess our sins is to lay them down before God and to subject them to His judgment, with the full intention of falling into them no more.
“If he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” When we have confessed our sins, we must receive the promised pardon, believing that God gives it.
Once the soul has made a confession and obtained pardon, it is ready to grasp God’s healing. It is when we keep far away from God that it is difficult to believe; confession and pardon bring us quite near to Him. It now becomes easy for the sick one to believe that he should be healed. A ray of life—His divine life—quickens the body; and the sick one proves that as soon as he is no longer separated from the Lord, the prayer of faith does save the sick.