Former Blackout Artist

So Rahab sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window. – Joshua 2:21

When I was a kid, I loved going to my granny’s house. Hanging in front of her kitchen window was this little glass prism. It didn’t look like much – just a small piece of cut glass suspended by a string. But around noontime, when the sun was shining directly through the front window, something incredible happened. The whole kitchen came alive. Rainbows danced across the walls, the cabinets, and even the floor. One tiny piece of glass suddenly revealed colors that had been there all along – you just couldn’t see them until the light shined through.

The Bible is full of moments like that prism at granny’s house.

Sometimes God gives us a picture in the Old Testament that seems ordinary at first, until the light of Christ shines through it. Then suddenly we see something that had been there all along.

Rahab’s scarlet cord is one of those pictures.

The spies promised Rahab that when Israel came to destroy Jericho, everyone inside her home would be spared – but only if the scarlet cord hung from her window. Rahab didn’t hesitate. She believed the promise, trusted the men who made it, and immediately tied the cord in her window.

There’s another interesting detail that is easy to overlook. Before that scarlet cord became the sign of Rahab’s salvation, it was the means by which she lowered the Israelite spies to safety. The very cord she used to save God’s servants became the sign God would use to save her! That’s how grace often works, isn’t it? God often takes the very thing that points others to salvation and uses it to remind us where our own hope has always been.

Think about what that meant. Rahab’s hope wasn’t in her sincerity, it wasn’t in her courage. It wasn’t even the fact that she had protected the spies. If that scarlet cord wasn’t hanging from her window, she would’ve died right along with the rest of Jericho.

From the earliest centuries of the church, believers like Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Origen saw that scarlet cord as a beautiful symbol of the blood of Christ. It’s hard not to notice the connection. Forty years earlier, God spared Israel when blood marked the doorposts of their homes in Egypt. Now, He spares Rahab when a scarlet cord marks her window in Jericho. In both stories, God provided one visible sign of salvation, and those who trusted His provision were rescued from judgment.

Here’s another interesting thought. Joshua entered Jericho as both a savior and a judge. To Rahab and her family, he brought deliverance. To everyone else, he brought judgment.

Jesus does the same.

He is the Savior of everyone who hides themselves beneath His blood, but He will also judge those who refuse Him. The same cross that offers mercy today will one day stand as God’s testimony that salvation was freely offered and willingly rejected.

Joshua 2 looks in two directions at once. It points backward to the blood on the doorposts in Egypt, and it points forward to the blood that would stain another piece of wood outside Jerusalem.

When the dust settled in Jericho, only one house was still standing. Not because it was built better, but because its owner believed God enough to hang a scarlet cord in the window.