God faith works faith in unlikely people and in unlikely places. Do we really believe the previous statement? How often do we think that God only works amongst the saintly?
Christians are very good at localising faith. We often have this sense that faith can only be here in a building on a Sunday. Those outside our neat church boundaries are considered unsaintly. The people on the street, those who live in Hollywood, the tax collectors, or even some in the political sphere – we feel that they don’t possess faith in God. We think that we can package God’s grace neatly. We often think, ‘Come to church, this is where grace is. Be here, and you will receive faith.’
Christians often want the unacceptable people to be made acceptable before we accept them. We mistakenly think that God will love the sinner, if that person first changes his or her ways first. It with these ideas that we want to do mission: come to church and you’ll be made into a saint. And yet, in the epistle reading for today, we encounter faith in the most unusual people.
Of particular interest is the person of Rahab. In Rahab we have a harlot who believes, a sinner who is a saint. God faith works faith in unlikely people and in unlikely places. The gospel is the message that God accepts sinners, and then he changes them. Acceptance and then transformation: that is grace by faith! And the most radically crazy, and ridiculous place that God works faith is the Cross. Who would have thought?
Pastor Will Frost
