James 5:19-20
Bringing a Wanderer Back
19My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back,
20consider this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
Berean Standard Bible
The letter ends without a summary or a flourish. James gives one last charge, and it is a quiet one, about what to do when a fellow believer drifts away.
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back,
He pictures a wanderer, a person who was walking in the truth and has drifted off it. The wandering is from the truth, James says, not a small slip in a detail but a drift away from what a person once held and lived by. And he pictures someone else who brings him back. James says almost nothing about how it happens, only that it can. He names no office and no special role for the task, speaking only of one of the brothers and of someone who turns him back. Then James tells them exactly what that quiet act accomplishes, and the size of it is startling.
consider this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
Two things happen when a wanderer is turned back. A soul is saved from death, and a multitude of sins is covered over. Both are James's own words, and he does not soften either one. Death is the word he chooses, so the stakes are not small: the wanderer is on a road that ends somewhere final, and the one who turns him back has pulled him off it. That is an enormous outcome for so unremarkable an act, and James wants it counted as enormous. He does not want the work of turning a straying brother back filed under things that would be nice to do. He calls it the saving of a life.
And it is a fitting last word. The letter closes not with a doctrine but with a person: the one who has slipped, and the ordinary believer who turns him back. James ends by prizing that quiet work, and he calls it nothing less than saving a soul from death and covering a multitude of sins.
How We Know
The phrase James closes with, covering a multitude of sins, is not his alone. It runs back through Scripture. Proverbs 10:12 says that love covers all transgressions, and Peter echoes the same line, that love covers a multitude of sins, in 1 Peter 4:8. So when James says that turning a wanderer back covers a multitude of sins, he is reaching for a line his readers would have recognized, about the way love deals with sin by covering rather than exposing it. The wording supports reading his final promise as part of that older stream, though he names no source and expects it to be known.
Questions
1 What situation does James close the letter with?
AnswerA believer wandering from the truth, and someone who brings him back. James pictures both the drifting away and the recovery, and he puts the whole weight of his final word on the person who turns the wanderer back rather than on the wanderer.
2 What two things does James say happen when a wanderer is turned back?
AnswerA soul is saved from death, and a multitude of sins is covered over. James wants both counted as enormous, so that turning a straying brother back is seen not as a small kindness but as the saving of a life.
3 What is notable about who does this work?
AnswerThat James assigns it to no particular office. He writes of one of you and of someone who brings a wanderer back, naming no elder or appointed role for the task, and leaving the charge with the brothers he is writing to.
4 How does this ending fit the rest of the letter?
AnswerHe ends by prizing the one who turns a wanderer back. He calls that work saving a soul from death and covering a multitude of sins, so the closing charge treats restoration as weighty rather than minor.
What This Means for Us
Name the person this family knows who has drifted, from the faith, from the church, from the truth they once walked in, and instead of talking about them, go toward them. It need not be dramatic. A call, a meal, a plain and gentle word is often the whole of it. James has just told you what is at stake when someone turns back, so do not treat the wanderer as a lost cause or someone else's job. Going after them is the saving of a life.
Prayer
Lord, you care for the ones who wander from you, and you do not treat a straying soul as a lost cause. Make us the kind of family that notices when someone has drifted, and goes toward them rather than away. Give us the love to speak the plain and gentle word that turns a wanderer back to you. Amen.