James 5:16 – Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
In preparing to write today’s devotion I found that my entire understanding of what it meant shifted. I realized I no longer could write what I had planned on writing because the Holy Spirit led me to see this verse completely differently. Let’s dig in and see if I am the only one having an ah ha moment.
In this passage, James tells us to confess our sins to one another. I was under the impression that this meant confessing to someone for accountability purposes and to take responsibility for our sins so that we could seek forgiveness.
But why would we need to confess to one another unless the sin was against the other party? If our sin is not being committed against the person hearing our confession, confessing becomes pointless. They do not have the power to forgive. Only God has the ultimate power of forgiveness (Psalm 51:4). We should be confessing sins to God, not to man because there is only one Judge and mediator between us and God and that is Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5).
If our sin is against another and we have confessed to them, then the next part comes into play. We are to pray for one another. Verses thirteen through sixteen are written about the subject of prayer. We confess our sins we commit against someone directly to them and then we pray for them. The reward for doing this? Healing! The original language indicates that this was for physical healing.
We conclude the verse with a simple statement – the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. God hears our prayers and He wants to heal us. And through this process, the world sees His power and majesty. We are forgiven, fellowship is restored, and lives grow spiritually.
What about you? Have you committed a sin against someone and you haven’t talked with them about it yet? There is no better time than now.
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