Rahab's story shows how living faith, like a living stream, will cut a
channel for itself, and must needs flow out into the life.
Hence James is right in using her as an example of how 'we are
justified by works and not by faith only,' and the author of the
_Epistle to the Hebrews_ is equally right in enrolling her in his great
muster-roll of heroes and heroines of faith, and asserting that 'by
faith' she 'perished not among them who believed not.' The one writer
fastens on a later stage in her experience than does the other. James
points to the rich fruit, the Epistle to the Hebrews goes deeper and
lays bare the root from which the life rose to the clusters.
The faith that saves is not a barren intellectual process, nor an idle
trust in Christ's salvation, but a practical power. If genuine it
_will_ mould and impel the life.
So Rahab's faith led her, as ours, if real, will lead us, to break with
old habits and associations contrary to itself. She ceased to be 'Rahab
the harlot,' she forsook 'her own people and her father's house.' But
her conquest of her old self was gradual. A lie was a strange kind of
first-fruits of faith. Its true fruit takes time to flower and swell
and come to ripeness and sweetness.
So we should not expect old heads on young shoulders, nor wonder if
people, lifted from the dunghills of the world, have some stench and
rags of their old vices hanging about them still. That thought should
moderate our expectations of the characters of converts from
heathenism, or from the degraded classes at home. And it should be
present to ourselves, when we find in ourselves sad recurrences of
faults and sins that we know should have been cast out, and that we
hoped had been so.
This thought enhances our wondering gratitude for the divine
long-suffering which bears with our slow progress. Our great Teacher
never loses patience with His dull scholars.