Forgiveness because of someone else's faith

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Davidius

Puritan Board Post-Graduate
This past Sunday our afternoon sermon was on a passage in James 5. Towards the end, the apostle says that elders can visit a sick person, anoint him with oil, and see him healed. He also says that the sick person will be forgiven of his sins through this prayer of faith. For obvious reasons we want to say that a person cannot be forgiven because of others' faith, but what about the paralytic in Mathew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5? In this story it appears as though Jesus heals the paralytic, and forgives his sins, because of the friends' faith. There are also the stories where individuals who were severely ill or possessed by demons were healed because of their relatives' faith.

How should we take these passages?
 
David, I would say that the term their is collective, and would also include the Paralytic.

So is that how we should interpret the prayer in James 5, too?
Yes, In my humble opinion.
[bible]James 5:14[/bible]
Who's initiating the exercise of faith in God's instruction here? The one who is sick. Before the elders come, he has to call on them. Why would he do that? Because he believes the Holy Spirit's words through James.

The strange thing is that it still ties the forgiveness and the healing into the time of prayer. Why wouldn't the person be forgiven way before the time when the elders came to say the prayer of faith?
 
Yes, In my humble opinion.
[bible]James 5:14[/bible]
Who's initiating the exercise of faith in God's instruction here? The one who is sick. Before the elders come, he has to call on them. Why would he do that? Because he believes the Holy Spirit's words through James.

The strange thing is that it still ties the forgiveness and the healing into the time of prayer. Why wouldn't the person be forgiven way before the time when the elders came to say the prayer of faith?
Here's Matthew Henry:
And, if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him; that is, where sickness is sent as a punishment for some particular sin, that sin shall be pardoned, and in token thereof the sickness shall be removed. As when Christ said to the impotent man, Go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee, it is intimated that some particular sin was the cause of his sickness. The great thing therefore we should beg of God for ourselves and others in the time of sickness is the pardon of sin. Sin is both the root of sickness and the sting of it. If sin be pardoned, either affliction shall be removed in mercy or we shall see there is mercy in the continuance of it. When healing is founded upon pardon, we may say as Hezekiah did: Thou hast, in love to my soul, delivered it from the pit of corruption, Isa. 38:17. When you are sick and in pain, it is most common to pray and cry, O give me ease! O restore me to health! But your prayer should rather and chiefly be, O that God would pardon my sins!

That's fine. I respect Matthew Henry, but he still doesn't explain why the elders are necessary in all of this. Henry doesn't really seem to address that question, rather why sickness and sin are mentioned in the same place.
 
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