"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. 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"
Verse thirteen gives two appropriate responses to two different situations. The first one deals with what we've been looking at in the previous verses, suffering. The correct response to suffering is prayer. The second situation is quite different. What if you are happy? Then sing. I love singing. A third situation is also given and then addressed at length. What if you are suffering in a different way? What if you are suffering, not because of someone else's sinful actions? What if you are just sick? The answer is prayer again.
But there seems to be more to the situation than, for example, someone with a cough requesting prayer. Surely that is fine to do. But the illness must have been severe or longstanding, meriting special attention from the leaders of the church. One possible source of the illness seems to be your own sinful choices. The text says "if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven." However, the existence of a sin wasn't a certainty as the forgiveness was conditioned by the existence of a sin.
So what does all this mean for me? The key to understanding the passage seems to be in the middle of the verses listed. "The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up." If I've committed sin and not confessed it to the Lord, it's going to be hard to look to Him honestly in faith. If there the Lord is going to raise me up, I need to look to Him rightly, in dependence and faith. This is true whether or not your illness is due to sin or not. However, if it was because of sin, my prayer of faith must entail your confession of sin and will result in the forgiveness of it.
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