The Scarlet Thread
When Your Past Becomes Part of God's Plan
Reading: Joshua 2; Joshua 6:22-25 Theme: Redemption doesn’t erase your past—it rewrites it into God’s story.
Her house was in the wall, right in the thick of destruction. Her reputation was marked by shame. Rahab the prostitute. A woman whose name echoed disgrace in every whispered conversation. Yet in God’s providence, her story would become one of the clearest pictures of redemption in all of Scripture.
When two Israelite spies entered Jericho, they found refuge in Rahab’s home (Joshua 2:1). But it wasn’t luck. It was grace. Rahab had heard of the God of Israel—the One who dried up the Red Sea, who brought down kings, who led His people like a shepherd through the wilderness (Joshua 2:10; Psalm 78:52-53). And though her life had been built on sin, her heart leaned toward faith. “The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath,” she confessed (Joshua 2:11).
That confession changed everything. By faith, she hid the spies. And by faith, she tied a scarlet cord in her window—a simple thread that became a lifeline of grace. Like the blood of the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:7), this red cord marked her household as protected. Like the blood of Christ, it stood as a sign that judgment would pass over her (Hebrews 9:22; 1 Peter 1:18-19).
When the walls of Jericho fell, hers remained. And when Israel swept through the city, she was spared—not because of her record, but because of her repentance.
But grace didn’t stop at rescue. It rewrote her story. “Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute… and she has lived in Israel to this day” (Joshua 6:25). Eventually, she married Salmon. She became the mother of Boaz (Ruth 4:21), the great-grandmother of David, and part of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 1:5). The woman with the scarlet past became a link in the scarlet thread of redemption.
This is the effect of the gospel. Not that God merely cleans up our mess, but that He weaves it into the fabric of His kingdom. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Not a new version of the old self, but someone reborn, repurposed, redeemed.
No matter how your story started—marked by sin, shame, or sorrow—Christ can rewrite it. The cross is our scarlet cord. The blood of Jesus marks our past, our present, and our future.
Let that cord hang from your window. Let it remind you that what once disqualified you is now the very thing that displays the mercy of God. Let it show to others that you are under the blood of Jesus, where love flows red.