"RAHAB"

An unscrupulous prostitute, a liar, and a Canaanite (enemy to the Israelites), Rahab is not someone you would expect to qualify to be used by God and to be listed in the New Testament as a hero (Hebrews 11:31). Despite her questionable life choices, she had a clarity of judgement and faith in recognising God for who He is and risked her own life for His people. In so doing she (and her family) alone were saved from destruction of the city of Jericho, and she later became the great-grandmother of King David, whose lineage eventually led to Jesus.

 

Perhaps you are aware of the depravity of your heart. You know you have made a mess of your life and are living with the daily consequences of the wrong choices you have made. Or perhaps you feel safe, because you try to be a good person most of the time and you haven’t murdered anyone or lived an immoral life like Rahab. Jesus came along and expanded on the existing Mosaic laws and really challenged our understanding of righteousness. Never mind murder, if you have been angry at your neighbour then you are guilty of murder in your heart (Matthew 5:23). Indeed the Bible tells us that our sinful human nature means ‘there is no one righteous, not even one’ (Romans 3:10) and ‘if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). The outlook is bleak indeed: we have all sinned and fallen short of His glory (Romans 3:23).

 

Where, then, can our hope lie? If standards of holiness required by God are so high above us that they are unattainable, how can we ever be right with God? The answer is not in anything we can do but in what God has already done. Because of God’s great love for us, He made us alive together with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses (Ephesians 2:5). Jesus came down to earth as a human and in his death, he paid the price for our sins, and redeemed us by his blood. Therefore, because of this, we can now stand before God totally justified and unashamed. God does not care about your past or your mistakes. He does not keep a record of the hidden,  hideous thoughts in your heart, because His wrath and judgment for all of our sins fell on Jesus alone. If Rahab, in spite of her past and character, could proclaim the truth about who God is and could be loved and redeemed by Him, then none of us are beyond the depth of God’s amazing grace.

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