Confessing your sins only to God?

[kra130]

So i’ve read James 5:14-16 in about ten different translations and every one of them say elder and not priest. “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. 15And 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. 16Therefore, 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.”

as i am reading it now i finally understand what it is saying. people often miss the first part of verse 15 “And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” at first glance it appears that the Lord is promising to heal the one who has the elder pray over him. however the verse is saying that if the individual prays the sinners prayer he will be saved (Romans 10:9-10). not from his illness mind you but from his sin. in 1 John 1:9 it says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” also to further prove my point note the conjunction at the beginning of the second sentence in verse 15 which is a dead give away that the sin being forgiven is in a direct relationship with the prayer of Faith (sinner prayer).

In verse 16 it says “therefore confess your sins to one another” not confess your sins to the priest or the elders but to one another. and it then says to pray for one another that you may be healed. no where in this passage does it say “confess your sins to the elders/priests that they may forgive you your sins.” John almost directly apposes this doctrine in 1 John 2:1b-2 “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” the word advocate is equivilant to that of a lawyer and i don’t know about anyone else but i want to be in direct contact with my lawyer and not have to go through a middle man.
Kevin

 

[jemfinch]

So i’ve read James 5:14-16 in about ten different translations and every one of them say elder and not priest.

The Greek word is presbyteroi, which literally means “elder” (it’s a substantive adjective, really) but is the very word from which we derive the English word “priest.”

I’ll leave the refutation of your claim concerning the sinner’s prayer for someone else with more inclination to counter; I don’t feel particularly moved to prove to you that a twentieth century theological innovation isn’t what James was writing about in the first century

Jeremy

 

[jmcrae]

The Greek word is presbyteroi, which literally means “elder” (it’s a substantive adjective, really) but is the very word from which we derive the English word “priest.”

I’ll leave the refutation of your claim concerning the sinner’s prayer for someone else with more inclination to counter; I don’t feel particularly moved to prove to you that a twentieth century theological innovation isn’t what James was writing about in the first century

Jeremy

In my own library, the “sinner’s prayer” isn’t mentioned until 1963 in The Christian Persuader. Writers prior to that (ie: The Calvary Road written in 1956) never heard of such a thing and don’t mention it in their instructions to evangelists. A Reason for Hope, written in 1946, doesn’t even indicate an “altar call,” thus showing that the altar call began to appear some time between 1946 and 1956, and the Sinner’s Prayer began to appear some time between 1956 and 1963.

 

[kra130]

i did not mean the litteral sinners prayer but rather i was reffering to Romans 10:9 that says “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” which is where the prayer is based on.