Already at the very beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus said that He had come into the world not to destroy the Torah, but to reveal it to the world in all its fullness. What did He mean? Of course, the issue was not the Torah as a text, nor the Torah as a legal or moral code...
Already at the very beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus said that He had come into the world not to destroy the Torah, but to reveal it to the world in all its fullness. What did He mean? Of course, the issue was not the Torah as a text, nor the Torah as a legal or moral code. The issue was what in those days was called the inner Torah and the ideal of the living Torah.
Every believing Jew then dreamed of becoming a living Torah, if, of course, he took his faith and spiritual life seriously. The point was not to memorize the text of the Pentateuch, though that too was not so rare, but to become a living embodiment of the Torah, revealing to the world the fullness of righteousness. This is exactly what the Savior is speaking about. But the Torah is not uniform: it contains commandments, and it contains laws given as means for observing those commandments.
The core of the Torah, the Law given by God, is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments so well known to us today and just as well known to every believing Jew in Gospel times. They are unchanging. But with the laws everything was not so simple: some of them were given with regard to the sinful nature of man. Such was the norm connected with the right to divorce. Indeed, if there is no possibility of living together, it is better to divorce and marry or be married a second time than to take lovers on the side, thereby violating the seventh commandment. But this is the logic of the fallen world, unacceptable to the Savior. For Him, in general, those norms of the Torah that exist as a concession to human sinfulness are unacceptable.
For Him, marriage is the union of two in the fullness and depth that existed in the world before the fall and did not suppose any possibility of rupture, disintegration, or destruction. He says directly that divorce becomes a consequence of hardness of heart, not in the sense of cruelty of heart, but in the sense of its rigidity, stubbornness, unyieldingness, unwillingness to change or to accept a person as he is. Such an approach might seem burdensome to the point of impossibility, if the matter were not the Kingdom and life in the Kingdom.
Jesus looks at the Torah as the spiritual instrument that makes a person an inhabitant of the Kingdom. He agrees to nothing less. And here there can be no concessions or relaxations, since in the Kingdom there is no place for any sin. And therefore no place for any hardness of heart. And the Savior calls people already here to be rid of everything incompatible with the life of the Kingdom. For the benefit of those who seek. For the earlier one is rid of all such things, the closer the goal becomes. Already here and now.
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5:14 Having anointed him with oil - This single conspicuous gift, which Christ committed to his apostles, Mar 6:13, remained in the church long after the other miraculous gifts were withdrawn. Indeed, it seems to have been designed to remain always; and St. James directs the elders, who were the most, if not the only, gifted men, to administer at. This was the whole process of physic in the Christian church, till it was lost through unbelief. That novel invention among the Romanists, extreme unction, practised not for cure, but where life is despaired of, bears no manner of resemblance to this.
5:15 And the prayer offered in faith shall save the sick - From his sickness; and if any sin be the occasion of his sickness, it shall be forgiven him.
5:16 Confess your faults - Whether ye are sick or in health.To one another - He does not say, to the elders: this may, or may not, be done; for it is nowhere commanded. We may confess them to any who can pray in faith: he will then know how to pray for us, and be more stirred up so to do. And pray one for another, that ye may be healed - Of all your spiritual diseases.
5:17 Elijah was a man of like passions - Naturally as weak and sinful as we are. And he prayed - When idolatry covered the land.
5:18 He prayed again - When idolatry was abolished.
5:19 As if he had said, I have now warned you of those sins to which you are most liable; and, in all these respects, watch not only over yourselves, but every one over his brother also. Labour, in particular, to recover those that are fallen.If any one err from the truth - Practically, by sin.
5:20 He shall save a soul - Of how much more value than the body! Jam 5:14.And hide a multitude of sins - Which shall no more, how many soever they are, be remembered to his condemnation.