When it comes to being a sinner, the term applies to everyone. That means a deeply evil person who exploits others, kills, steals, etc. and a person who steps over the line and lies one time or who gossips once or who is full of pride at his own goodness are both sinners. Sin is sin and I’m either walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh. Sin does not have a scale making one sin worse than another except in the way it affects me and everyone else.
God makes a point in the story of the Israelites when they conquered Jericho. They first sent two spies who were in peril and wound up at the house of a prostitute.
(She) said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. (Joshua 2:9–11)
Her confession of faith and the protection offered to the two spies was a God-thing. He used her faith, as imperfect as it might have been, for his purposes. She risked her own life to hide the spies. MacArthur points out that because Rahab lied to protect them, we might question the validity of her faith thinking that genuine believers wouldn’t lie like that. However, Abraham did. Sarah did. Isaac did. Jacob did. But the important thing to understand is that God honors faith, not deception, and not ever any ‘good’ deeds we do apart from faith.
The NT says: “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” (Hebrews 11:31) In this, she illustrates the depth and breadth of God’s amazing grace, but also that no matter what we are or were, have done or not done, God’s saving grace is about faith in Him, not about our performance. This is not an excuse to sin but a reason to trust Him!
Not only was Rahab a prostitute, she was not an Israelite but a Canaanite. Her people were idolatrous, barbaric, debauched, infamous even among pagans for their immorality and cruelty. Yet amid that exceedingly wicked society, Rahab came to faith in the Lord God. Her faith wasn’t perfect, nor was her knowledge of God’s moral law, but because she trusted God, she was spared during Jericho’s conquest, and then was given an even greater honor — she became the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth, the great-great-grandmother of David, thereby becoming an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ. (see Matthew 1)
PRAY: Jesus, I know there are people who say their lives are so horrid that God cannot forgive them. Rahab’s story illustrates that His grace is for all, those who appear ‘good people’ and those we would consider great sinners. You do not measure us like that. Your word says:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Romans 3:21–25)
To You all praise be given for Your great salvation which You offer to all, even to those we consider ‘vile sinners’ for Your Word says:
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. (Isaiah 64:6–7, italics mine)
PONDER: How do I feel when reading about this woman and about the truth that God isn’t impressed by any ‘good’ that I do apart from Him?
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