The Prayer of Faith and the Care of Souls

Read James 5:13–20 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

James 5:16

The Pastor’s Farewell

We have come to the end. Across nine sessions, James has walked us through some of the most searching territory in the New Testament. We have taken up the epistle of straw that Luther worried about and found it to be, in fact, full of the Gospel. He has taught us about trials and wisdom. He has warned us against being hearers only. He has rebuked our partiality. He has, in the theological heart of the letter, shown us how saving faith is never alone. He has held up the tongue as a mirror, contrasted two kinds of wisdom, exposed our friendship with the world, and announced that God gives more grace. He has called us to plan humbly, use wealth justly, wait patiently, and speak plainly. And now, in these final eight verses, he closes the letter.

Notice how he closes. Not with a theological flourish. Not with a doxology. Not with a final ringing summary of his argument. He closes as the pastor he has been all along, with a series of practical instructions about the life of the congregation. Pray when you suffer. Sing when you are cheerful. Call for the elders when you are sick. Confess your sins to one another. Bring back the brother who is wandering. This is the ending of a letter written by someone who loves his people. He is handing them to one another, and to the Lord, as he takes his leave.

For the Lutheran Christian, this closing passage is particularly rich. It contains some of the clearest New Testament support for the anointing of the sick, for the practice of private confession and absolution, for the mutual care of Christians for one another’s souls, and for the ministry of restoration when a brother wanders from the truth. The passage has been contested across the centuries: Roman Catholics have built the sacrament of Extreme Unction on verse 14, while many Protestants have reacted by rejecting anointing altogether. The Lutheran Church has found a middle path, receiving this passage as pastoral instruction for the ongoing life of the congregation without making what James describes into a separate sacrament. We will walk that path carefully in this session.

And we will also take a moment at the end to look back across the whole letter. What have we seen? What has James taught us? How has our reading of the letter been shaped by the Lutheran Confessions and by five hundred years of faithful engagement with this Epistle? We come to the end of the study not as the same people who began it ten weeks ago. We have been shaped by what we have read, and it is worth, at the last, asking how.

Three Conditions and Their Responses

James opens the section with a simple structural device. He names three conditions a Christian may find himself in, and he gives a specific response for each. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? 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.

The structure is elegant. Three conditions that cover much of the range of ordinary life: suffering, cheerfulness, sickness. And three responses, each of which turns the Christian toward God and toward the community God has given. In suffering, prayer. In joy, praise. In sickness, the prayer of the elders and anointing.

What is striking about this short passage is how comprehensive it is. Every circumstance of life is brought under the ministry of prayer in one form or another. The Christian who has lost a loved one turns to prayer. The Christian who has received good news turns to praise. The Christian whose body has failed him turns to the elders. There is no condition of life in which the Christian is left alone. There is always a response the Word of God invites us into, and that response is always, in one form or another, toward God.

Prayer and Song

The first two responses are simple enough to pass over without much reflection, but they reward a moment’s attention. James does not say the one who suffers should stoically endure. He says the suffering Christian should pray. This is the posture of the child who turns to the Father in trouble, not the posture of the stoic who resolves to bear the pain alone. Stoic endurance has its place (the Scriptures commend patience, which is a form of endurance) but endurance is not the whole of the Christian response to suffering. Prayer is. And prayer involves bringing the suffering to the One who can do something about it, including the something of sustaining us through it.

And the cheerful Christian, James says, should sing. This too is worth noticing. The Christian who is happy is not commended for keeping it to himself, for private enjoyment, for gratitude that remains internal. The Christian is commended for expressing his joy in praise to God. The Psalms are full of this. The early Christians filled their worship with it. The Lutheran Church has been, historically, a singing church, and there is good reason for this. When God gives us joy, the appropriate response is not merely to feel the joy but to direct it back to the Giver in song. Song is joy made audible and shared.

The Anointing of the Sick

The third response deserves more extended treatment, because it is more specific and more contested. Is anyone among you sick? 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. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

This is a remarkable passage. Several things are worth noticing about it.

First, the sick person calls for the elders. The initiative lies with the one who is suffering, not with the elders who happen to notice. This is the congregation functioning as a community. The sick member recognizes his need and reaches out. The elders, hearing the call, come to him. This is the rhythm of the Christian congregation at its best. Members who are willing to ask for help, elders who are willing to come.

Second, the elders pray over him. This is the central action. The elders are not there to perform a rite in isolation from prayer; they are there to pray. And they pray over him, which suggests physical proximity: they are in the sick person’s presence, perhaps with their hands extended over him or laid upon him. This is intimate pastoral care, not distant concern.

Third, they anoint him with oil. The oil is not magical. It is not medicinal in the modern sense. It is a symbolic action that accompanies the prayer, signifying that the sick person has been set apart for the Lord’s attention, marked with a visible sign of the pastoral care being offered. The anointing belongs to the prayer; it does not replace the prayer.

Fourth, the anointing is in the name of the Lord. This is the key. The oil does nothing in itself. What matters is that the prayer and the anointing are offered in the name of the Lord who heals, who hears, who acts for His people.

A Word About Sacraments

At this point a pastoral question often arises. Is this a sacrament? The Roman Catholic tradition has historically said yes, making this the basis of what was long called Extreme Unction (the Last Anointing) and is now more commonly called the Anointing of the Sick. The Lutheran tradition has said no: this is a valuable pastoral practice, rooted in Scripture, but it does not rise to the level of a sacrament in the way that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper do.

The difference is not trivial. The Lutheran understanding of a sacrament, as articulated in the Confessions, requires three elements: a command of Christ, a promise of grace, and a visible element joined to the Word. Baptism has all three: Christ commanded it, Baptism is connected to the forgiveness of sins and new birth, and the visible element is water. The Lord’s Supper has all three: Christ commanded it, it is connected to the forgiveness of sins and union with Christ, and the visible elements are bread and wine. Absolution, in some Lutheran usage, is counted as a sacrament too, though not universally.

The anointing of the sick does not have the same status. Christ did not command it in the way He commanded Baptism and the Supper. No broader promise of grace is universally attached to it. And while there is a visible element, its use is described but not instituted as a sacrament. Lutherans therefore receive this passage as pastoral instruction, a practice the Church may and in many traditions does continue, but not a sacrament that stands alongside Baptism and the Supper.

This does not mean we reject anointing. The practice largely fell out of Lutheran use after the Reformation, but it has been recovered in many places: several Lutheran service books and pastoral-care agendas now include a rite for anointing the sick, and many chaplains use oil in prayer for the ill. All of this is entirely consistent with this passage and with the Lutheran tradition. What we do not do is make this a separate sacrament, or ascribe to the oil itself any power apart from the prayer that accompanies it. The sick person is healed, when healing comes, by the Lord’s gracious response to the prayer of faith. The oil is a sign. The prayer is the instrument.

The Prayer of Faith

James says the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. This sentence is both promising and pastorally delicate. We need to handle it honestly.

The promise is real. God hears the prayers of His people. He acts for His people. Many a Christian has been physically healed in response to the prayers of the elders, and many more have been strengthened, sustained, or given grace to endure. The passage is not empty. The Lord’s hearing is not theoretical.

But we also must say, honestly, that not every sick person is physically healed in response to the prayer of faith. Paul, who prayed three times for the removal of his thorn in the flesh, was not relieved of it, and Paul himself left his coworker Trophimus ill at Miletus (see 2 Timothy 4:20). The saints of the ages have died of illnesses that prayer did not remove. To promise your class that physical healing will always follow if the prayer is offered rightly would be to promise them something Scripture itself does not promise.

How, then, do we read James’s claim? The word translated save can mean physical healing, but it can also mean eternal salvation. The word translated raise up can refer to the raising of a sick person from his bed, but it can also refer to the raising of the dead at the last day. James may well have both in view. The prayer of faith does save the sick: sometimes in this life, through physical healing, and always in the end, through the salvation that culminates in the resurrection. No prayer of faith is wasted. The Lord hears every one, and He answers every one, perhaps not in the timing or form we expected, but always for our true good.

And notice what James adds at the end. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. The prayer for the sick is also, implicitly, a prayer for forgiveness. Sickness in the biblical worldview is not always tied to specific sins (Jesus made this clear in the case of the man born blind) but the two can be connected, and the ministry of prayer for the sick therefore includes the ministry of forgiveness. The sick person may have specific sins weighing on his conscience, sins that the elders can absolve in the name of Christ, sins that the prayer of faith can lift from him as surely as the illness itself.

Confess Your Sins to One Another

James now extends the theme of prayer and forgiveness beyond the specific case of the sick person to the general life of the Christian community. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

This is one of the most important verses in the entire letter for the Lutheran tradition, because it is the biblical foundation for the practice of private confession and absolution. Lutherans have not always made good use of this practice (it has fallen into disuse in much of American Lutheranism) but the Confessions value it highly. Luther himself, in the Large Catechism and elsewhere, spoke of private confession as a treasure that should not be neglected. And James gives us the biblical basis.

What James Is Commending

Notice what James says. Confess your sins to one another. Not privately to yourself. Not merely silently to God. But to one another, to other Christians, to brothers and sisters in the faith who can hear the confession and respond to it with prayer.

This is not a command that we confess every sin to every Christian. It is not a mandate for public disclosure of private failings. The confession James commends is specific and personal: the confession of a particular sin to a particular Christian, in the context of a trusted relationship in which the sin can be named honestly and the forgiveness of Christ spoken over it. In the Lutheran tradition, this has typically taken two main forms: private confession to the pastor (who stands in the stead of Christ to pronounce absolution) and mutual confession between Christians who bear one another’s burdens.

Both forms have their place. The pastor, by virtue of his call to the public office of the ministry, bears the specific authority to pronounce the forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name. This is the Office of the Keys, the authority Christ gave His Church to forgive and retain sins (Matthew 16 and 18, John 20). When a Christian brings a burdened conscience to the pastor and confesses his sins, the pastor speaks Christ’s own absolution, and the sins are forgiven. This is not a small thing. It is one of the most pastorally significant practices the Church has preserved.

But mutual confession between Christians is also real. Luther himself commended this. When a burdened Christian confides in a trusted friend and asks for prayer, and the friend responds by naming the forgiveness of Christ and praying for the one who has confessed, Christ’s forgiveness is present. The public exercise of the Keys belongs to the called office of the ministry. But when one Christian speaks Christ’s forgiveness to another in private, that word is no less Christ’s own, because the Keys belong to the whole Church. This is a real Christian ministry of care, and James commends it here.

The Loss and Recovery of Private Confession

Honesty requires us to acknowledge that private confession has largely been lost in much of American Lutheranism. Most Lutherans today have never used it. Many do not know their pastor offers it. Some suspect it of being too Catholic. The Reformation that Luther led did not remove private confession; it reformed it, freeing it from the distortions Rome had attached to it. But the reform has, in much of our own tradition, drifted into neglect.

There is no shame in not having used private confession. Many faithful Lutherans have lived their entire Christian lives without it, and the Lord has sustained them by other means. But there is real loss in the neglect. When a Christian has a specific sin weighing on his conscience (a sin that has been forgiven in the general confession at worship but that still troubles him, a sin he has confessed privately to God but cannot quite believe is forgiven) private confession is the specific medicine for his specific wound. The pastor hears the sin named. The pastor pronounces Christ’s own forgiveness. The Christian leaves the encounter knowing that what Christ has forgiven is forgiven indeed.

If you have never used private confession, or if it has been many years since you have, consider asking your pastor about it. Most Lutheran pastors are glad to offer it, even if most do not actively advertise it. This is not a step backward toward Rome. It is a step forward into a Lutheran practice that Luther himself treasured and that our Confessions commend.

The Prayer of a Righteous Person

James closes this section with a memorable claim. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. And he gives us Elijah as an example, a man with a nature like ours, who prayed that it might not rain, and for three and a half years it did not rain. And he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The phrase a man with a nature like ours is pastorally important. Elijah was not a different order of creature from the rest of us. He was not a spiritual superman. He was a prophet, yes, but he was also a man who fled in fear from Jezebel, who asked to die under a tree, who had to be fed by angels when he was spent. His prayers were answered not because he was different from us but because the God to whom he prayed is the God to whom we pray. The prayers of righteous people (meaning, for the Lutheran Christian, those who have been made righteous in Christ by faith) have great power, not because of any righteousness of their own but because of the God who hears them.

This is the foundation for our own confidence in prayer. We do not pray on the basis of our spiritual achievements, our faithfulness, our record of answered prayers in the past. We pray on the basis of Christ, who has made us righteous by His own sacrifice. The righteous person whose prayer has great power is not the spiritual elite. It is the Christian clothed in Christ’s righteousness, praying in Christ’s name. That description fits every baptized believer. Your prayers, too, have great power as they are working. Not because of you, but because of the One to whom you pray.

The Wandering Brother

James closes the letter with a final pastoral instruction. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

This is one of the most hopeful sentences in the New Testament, and it is the perfect closing for James’s letter. After everything he has said (the warnings about faith without works, the severe words about partiality and the tongue and friendship with the world, the calls to humble reception of grace) James ends not with condemnation of the wandering but with a promise to those who bring them back.

Who Wanders?

The wandering James has in mind is the wandering of a Christian from the truth. This is not merely a mistake in doctrine, though it can include that. It is a drift from the faith, a turning aside from the path, a departure from the life the baptized are called to live. It may be a drift into false teaching. It may be a slide into unrepentant sin. It may be a slow coldness that has taken hold where once there was warmth toward Christ. The forms are varied. But the pattern is the same. A Christian, once walking with the Lord, has wandered. And the letter closes by telling us what to do about it.

Notice that James does not tell us to write the wandering brother off. He does not tell us that once a Christian has wandered, he is no longer our concern. He does not tell us to condemn, to cut off, to treat as if he were never part of the family. Quite the opposite. If someone brings him back. The wandering brother is to be pursued. The community is to care about him. The work of the congregation is to include the ministry of restoration, the patient, costly work of going after those who have gone astray.

Bringing Back

What does it mean to bring someone back? James does not spell out the techniques, and it is worth noticing that. This is not a how-to manual. The bringing back will take different forms in different situations: a conversation, a confrontation, a long patience, a specific intervention, a prayer, a phone call, a visit, a gentle question, a hard truth. What matters is that the Christian community is oriented toward the wandering, not indifferent to them.

Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son all point to the same concern. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one. The woman sweeps her whole house until she finds the coin. The father runs to meet his returning son when he is still a long way off. This is the heart of God, and James is calling us to share in it. The congregation that has received mercy cannot be indifferent to those who are wandering. We pursue, not because we are better than they are, but because we have been brought back ourselves, and the mercy we received is meant to flow through us.

Saving the Soul from Death

James’s claim for this ministry is large. Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Note carefully what James is and is not saying. He is not teaching that we save souls by our own effort. Christ saves souls. We are not saviors. What James is saying is that the Christian who participates in the restoration of a wandering brother is used by God in the work of salvation, the work that finally belongs to Christ but that Christ accomplishes through His ministers and His people. When we bring back a sinner, we are not acting apart from Christ; we are acting as instruments of the Christ who has already gone looking for the lost. Our bringing back is His bringing back, mediated through us.

And the promise that a multitude of sins will be covered is a promise of the Gospel. The sins of the wandering brother are not to be counted against him in the end; they will be covered by the blood of Christ, as surely as our own sins have been covered. The ministry of restoration is a ministry of participation in the covering that only Christ has accomplished. We do not cover sins by our own merit. But when we bring the wandering back to Christ, Christ covers them, and we have been used in the covering.

This is a beautiful ending for the letter, and it is no accident. After a letter full of warnings and exhortations, James ends by placing the whole congregation under the shape of the Gospel mercy. We are not here to condemn. We are here to bring back. And the one who brings back, even when the bringing is hard, costly, and long, shares in Christ’s own saving work.

Gathering the Threads

James closes the letter not with a doctrinal flourish but with a portrait of the praying congregation. The Christian who is suffering prays. The Christian who is cheerful sings. The Christian who is sick calls the elders, who pray over him and anoint him with oil. The Christian who has fallen confesses to a brother and is prayed for. The Christian who has wandered is sought out and brought back. Across these few verses, James gives us the shape of a Christian community in which mercy is the medium of every relationship: mercy received from Christ, mercy extended toward one another.

The prayer that runs through the passage is not a private exercise. It is the breath of a body whose members bear one another. Elijah’s prayer is offered as the model, a man with a nature like ours, whose prayers prevailed because of the God who heard him, not because of the man who prayed. The prayer that effects much is the prayer of any righteous person, made righteous by faith in Christ, offered with the confidence of the children for whom the Father has already given His Son. Such prayer is the right of every believer and the work of every congregation.

For the Lutheran Christian, this passage anchors several things at once. The mutual confession and absolution of brothers and sisters in Christ, what Luther called the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren and counted as a means of grace. The anointing of the sick as pastoral care, received with thanksgiving though not numbered among the sacraments. The faithful pursuit of the wandering, which is not the work of any specialist but the calling of every member. And underneath all of these, the prayer of faith, which is the breath of the body of Christ.

This is a fitting close to the letter. James began with the trials that test faith and ends with the congregation in which trials are borne together. He began with the wisdom asked of God and ends with the prayer that draws on that wisdom. He began with the doer of the Word and ends with the Christian who has gone after the wanderer. The letter has come full circle. The community James envisions is the community that lives out what the letter has taught.

The Epistle of Straw Reconsidered

We began this study ten weeks ago with a question. Was Luther right to call James an epistle of straw? Was this letter somehow less than the other New Testament writings, a book that does not preach Christ as clearly, a book the Lutheran Church tolerates rather than treasures?

We can answer that question now with the accumulated weight of nine sessions behind us. James is not an epistle of straw. James is a pastoral letter of extraordinary depth, written by a pastor who loved his people and who gave them, in five short chapters of wisdom and warning and promise, a picture of the baptized life that is complete, searching, and thoroughly shaped by the Gospel.

We have heard James teach us the doctrine of regeneration through the Word. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth. We have heard him teach us the unity of the Law and the way it drives us to Christ. Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. We have heard him teach us how faith and works relate, and we have learned to say, with the Lutheran Confessions, that saving faith is alone in justifying us but never alone in the life of the Christian. We have heard him teach us about the tongue, the two kinds of wisdom, the friendship with the world that is enmity with God. And in the middle of the most searching passage in the letter, we have heard him say the words that ring through the whole of the Christian life. But He gives more grace.

These are not the teachings of a strawy book. These are the teachings of a Scripture in the full sense: inspired, authoritative, sufficient. Luther’s pastoral concern in 1522 was real, and we have taken it seriously. Luther did question James’s place among the chief books, but what drove his concern was how James was being misused by his Roman Catholic opponents. Once we see that Paul and James are asking different questions about the one Gospel, once we see that the Lutheran Confessions resolve the apparent tension with precision, once we see that Luther himself, in his description of faith in the Preface to Romans, is saying essentially what James is saying — once all of this is in view, the epistle of straw looks very different. It looks like gold.

What We Have Learned

Look back over the whole letter with me. What has it given us?

It has given us a picture of the Christian life that is thoroughly shaped by the Word. The implanted Word that is able to save our souls. The perfect law of liberty that is the mirror into which we look. The wisdom from above that is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, sincere. The Word is everywhere in this letter, not as an object to be mastered but as the instrument by which God is slowly making us new.

It has given us a picture of the Christian community that is shaped by mercy received and mercy extended. Mercy triumphs over judgment. He gives more grace. Confess your sins to one another. Bring back the wandering brother. We do not stand apart from one another in the congregation; we bear one another, and the mercy of Christ flows through us to our brothers and sisters.

It has given us a picture of the Christian self as simultaneously justified and sinner, faith and struggle together. The blessing and cursing mouth. The two sources in the one spring. The double-minded heart that is slowly being made whole. James does not pretend that the Christian life is simple or that sanctification is quick. He describes it as it is: slow, uneven, real. And he points us to the means by which growth actually happens. Word. Sacrament. Prayer. Confession. Mutual care. The ordinary rhythms of life in the congregation of the baptized.

It has given us, above all, a picture of the Christ who stands at the center of all of this. The Lord of glory whom we worship in the assembly. The Christ of the Sermon on the Mount, whose teaching echoes on every page of this letter. The Christ who has shown us what the wisdom from above looks like, because He is that wisdom in the flesh. The Christ who gives more grace. The Christ who is coming. The Christ whose name has been placed on us in Baptism, and whose forgiveness is spoken over us whenever we confess our sins to one another.

A Closing Word

The letter ends without a formal benediction, without a closing doxology, without the kind of flourish that Paul often used. James simply stops. He has said what he came to say. The wandering brother, the congregation that brings back, the mercy that covers a multitude of sins — these are the last words. And then the letter is done.

There is something pastorally fitting about this ending. James is not writing a treatise; he is writing a letter to a church he loves. When the letter is done, the church is entrusted to the Lord. The writer has done his part. Now it is time for the community to live out what has been said, to bring back the wandering, to confess to one another, to pray when suffering and sing when cheerful, to wait for the coming of the Lord. The letter is over. The life of the congregation continues.

So it is with our study. We have walked together through ten weeks in this Epistle. We close the letter, and we close the study. But the congregation continues. The life continues. The ministry of receiving the Word and living it out, of confessing and absolving, of bringing back the wandering, of waiting for the Lord — all of this continues, for as long as the Lord gives us. The study was a tool. The life is the real thing. May the tool have served the life, and may the life bear the fruit James commends.

Luther was wrong, I think, to call James an epistle of straw, though we have come to understand his concern and even to honor it. What he called straw is in fact gold. And what he feared about James, that it would be misused to obscure the Gospel of justification by faith alone, we now see does not have to happen. James and Paul are one in the Gospel. Both witnesses are needed. And together they give us the picture of the Christian life that is full, and true, and sufficient, and grounded in the Christ who is the wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption of His people.

May the Lord who has led us through this study continue to form us into His people. May He cause us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. May He give us the wisdom from above. May He cover our many sins with the more grace that He has given us in Christ. And may He, at the Last Day, find us waiting for Him, patient as the farmer, steadfast as Job, bearing one another along the way, and receiving Him with joy when He appears.

Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be the glory. Amen.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection as we close out the study.

1. James closes the letter with practical instructions rather than a theological flourish. What does this closing tell you about James as a pastor, and about what he valued most?

2. The anointing of the sick has been contested across church history. As a Lutheran, how do you receive this passage: as pastoral instruction, as a valuable practice, as something your own congregation might reclaim? Have you ever been anointed for healing, or do you know someone who has?

3. Private confession and absolution is a Lutheran practice that has largely fallen out of use in modern American Lutheranism. Have you ever used it? If not, why not? If so, what has been your experience? Is it something you would consider?

4. Who in your life (in your family, your congregation, your circle of friends) has wandered from the faith? What would it look like for you to be part of bringing that person back? Is there a step you can take this week?

5. Look back over the ten sessions we have worked through together. What has been the most important thing you have learned from James? What has changed about how you read Scripture, or about how you understand your own Christian life?

6. We began the study ten weeks ago with the question of whether James is an epistle of straw. How would you answer that question now? Has your reading of the letter been what you expected at the beginning?

A Farewell

We close this study as James closed his letter. Not with a flourish but with the simple handing of the community to one another and to the Lord. Thank you for walking through the Epistle of James with me over these ten weeks. May the Word we have studied continue to do its slow, saving work in us. May we be doers and not hearers only. And may the Lord, when He comes, find us faithful.

Until that day, the implanted Word continues. The congregation continues. The ministry of mercy, mutual confession, and bringing back the wandering continues. Go out from this study as one who has been strengthened by the Word. Go, and continue the life that the Word has made in you.

Closing Prayer

Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your servant James, and for the letter through which he has taught, warned, comforted, and called us over these weeks. We thank You that the implanted Word has continued its saving work in us. We thank You for the assembly of the baptized, for the elders who pray over the sick, for the brothers and sisters who hear our confessions, for those who have come looking for us when we have wandered. Strengthen us for the life ahead. Make us doers of the Word and not hearers only. Conform us, day by day, to the image of Your Son, in whose name we pray, with the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria