James 5:19-20 – Hope for the Saddest Category

Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

If you don’t have some kind of prayer notebook, I would highly recommend setting one up. Writing down requests and annotating how God answered them can be one of the most rewarding experiences in one’s spiritual walk. Of course your notebook doesn’t have to look like mine, but being creatures who crave organization, inevitably our prayer journals will contain several categories. My own are broken down into headings such as “family”, “church family”, “political leaders” and so on and so forth.

There is one category, however, that never fails to bring a heaviness to my heart when I turn the page. The heading reads “The Fallen”, and the names underneath are those who once walked in the light of the Truth, but who have since abandoned Christ for this world.

And that list is depressingly long. On it are childhood friends, college buddies, people who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with me in various ministries, and…perhaps worst of all…people I baptized. That one brings a particularly sharp stab of pain.

I’ve never stopped praying for them. Even as I write this, they come to my mind’s eye. The former deacon who left his wife and two little boys. The kid from youth group who disappeared and whose social media posts now consist of enigmatic posts from a European capital. The young man whose grief over the death of his wife drove him away from Christ. And I don’t mind if they read this and see themselves in the descriptions, because I want them to know that someone still prays.

Truth be told, I’ve never stopped praying. But in these two final verses of his magnificent epistle, James brings motivation and encouragement to my prayers. Indeed, after studying these verses, I take on prayer for this category with a renewed vigor.

The Motivation

It’s important that we understand what is happening here. James is not talking about Christians sinning (he has done plenty of that already). Look at these two phrases:

“…if anyone among you wanders from the truth…”

No, this is someone who once walked in the truth, but no longer does. He has rejected what he once claimed to believe. The next key phrase makes it even clearer:

“…he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death…”

In other words, if this person does not turn from his ways, he will go to Hell. This is consistent with the teaching found in I John 2:19:

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”

The motivation is this: we are not simply praying for backsliders to begin to return to church. No, we are praying for unbelievers to be saved. Their original conversion was a sham, and they need Christ.

This truth is especially important for the parents of “backslidden” children. We may remember when “Little Johnny” or “Little Suzy” made that profession of faith in VBS (not knocking VBS or children’s ministries in the least, mind you), but if he is not walking with Christ now, chances are very good that Jonny and Suzy need to be evangelized.

The Encouragement

But these verses also contain a hope for those of us whose “fallen” list seems depressingly prone to growth. Look at this phrase again:

“…he who turns a sinner from the error of his way…”

Did you catch that? James is dealing with something that is well within the realm of possibility. It’s not “if he could turn…” but “he who turns…” It can happen. It’s bound to happen on at least some occasions.

It is perhaps significant that these verses follow right on the heels of a section on the effectiveness of prayer. Persistence in prayer is one of the greatest tools we have in turning the wanderer from his destructive path.

So make your “fallen” list, pray for the people who populate it, and be prepared to extend your hand whenever possible.

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This concludes our study through the book of James. It has been one of the more spiritually profitable projects I have undertaken in the last few years. If you’re just joining us and would like to start at the beginning, you can find all the James posts here. Beginning in the next couple of weeks I plan to start a series on the life of David, based on a Sunday School series I did here in Brazil a few years ago. In the mean time, I’ll be re-posting the James devotionals, in order, on our social media every Sunday morning.

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And be sure to read the action-packed adventures of Missionary Max: Missionary Max and the Jungle Princess and Missionary Max and the Lost City.