“Jesus with flesh on.” I have often heard that phrase used but am puzzled by what people really mean when they use it. It’s not that I don’t understand how it’s being used. I just don’t understand if others really understand what that phrase means. For some it means reducing Jesus to a set of ethical precepts. For others it may mean showing the same compassion as Jesus showed. Yet is there another part that we may just be missing?

We come to these passages, such as in James 5:14-15a. “Is any sick among you? Let him call the elders of the church, that they might pray over him, anointing 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.”

Now it seems to me that the purpose of calling, praying, anointing and prayer of faith is not to leave the person in the same state of sickness. The person who is sick obviously doesn’t want to stay in that state. The family of the sick don’t want their loved one to stay in that state. Yet why call for the elders to anoint and pray if it makes absolutely no difference. It can easily get reduced to another religious activity that has no impact on a person’s life or situation.

There seems to be a disconnect between the “Jesus with flesh on” that we read about in the Bible and how He is often seen in the church. Wherever Jesus went people were set free. When John the Baptist questioned who Jesus was he sent two disciples to find out. Jesus’ answer was simply, “Go and tell John the things that you hear and see. The blind receive their sight and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised and the poor have the gospel preached to them and blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Mt.11:2-6). The blind didn’t stay blind; the lame were no longer crippled; the lepers were freed from Hansen’s disease; the deaf’s hearing was restored.

I have stood at the bedside of very sick people and asked the question, “If you could have Jesus do one thing for you what would it be?” Almost, without exception the answer is, “I want to get well”. It’s easy for me, in that moment, to offer a pious prayer and then walk out of the room, leaving the sick person still longing for that “wellness”. No wonder cynicism runs deep among those who see religious practitioners as having “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof”. (2 Tim.3:5). Maybe that is why the latter part of that verse becomes the watchword of the cynic, “and from such people turn away!”

In James the sick person is exhorted to reach out to those who can help, who profess to be “Jesus with flesh on”, to the elders of the church. Yet do the elders believe that “praying and anointing with oil in the name of the Lord” makes any difference? Do they really believe “that the prayer of faith will save him?”

“The trouble with the Sadducees (religious sect) is that they believed in a religion that was entirely ethical and who never admitted the relation of the ethical to the spiritual” (Morgan). Are we much different?

Blessings!