God Uses Unlikely People
"By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies." — Hebrews 11:31
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Introduction
Hebrews 11 is the hall of faith. There you find Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses.
And there you find Rahab.
Not in a footnote. Not with an apologetic explanation tucked alongside her name. She's in the same chapter, introduced by the same formula — "by faith" — that opens the stories of the patriarchs.
If that doesn't unsettle us at least a little, we probably aren't reading closely enough.
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1. She Was Disqualified on Every Religious Criterion
Be honest with yourself. If Rahab walked into a church today, how many boxes could she check?
She didn't fail one criterion. She failed every single one.
And yet the Holy Spirit moved the author of Hebrews to place her name right alongside Abraham's.
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2. What Counted Was Faith — and Faith Came by Hearing
How did a woman from Jericho come to believe in the God of Israel?
She tells us herself: "for we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites" (Joshua 2:10).
Notice two remarkable things. First, she believed by hearing a report — she had not witnessed a single miracle with her own eyes. Second, the Red Sea crossing had happened forty years earlier. She believed on the basis of an old story, passed from mouth to mouth across the generations.
"Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17).
And there is a detail that cuts even deeper: everyone in the city had heard the same report. Verse 9 tells us that "all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you." The information was the same for everyone. What was different was the response.
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3. Her Faith Was Honored — and Her Failures Were Not Hidden
This needs to be said carefully, because not everything Rahab did that night was admirable. She lied to the king's men (Joshua 2:4–5). The text records that fact without praising it or explicitly condemning it.
Hebrews does not celebrate her for being perfect. It celebrates her for one specific thing: she "did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies."
That frees us from a naïve reading of this story. God works with real people — people with messy histories and questionable decisions. Grace does not wait for the cleaned-up version of you before it gets to work.
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4. What Disqualifies You in People's Eyes Does Not Limit Grace
Paul would later write: "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27).
It is not that God chooses the weak out of sentimentality. It is that when He chooses the unlikely, no one can mistake the miracle for personal merit.
If God had chosen the most respectable woman in Jericho, we would have a story about character. He chose Rahab — and we have a story about grace.
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Conclusion
Whatever people use to disqualify you does not limit what the grace of God can do.
Hebrews 11 is not a list of flawless people. It is a list of people who believed.
And right in the middle of patriarchs and prophets, without apology, stands the name of a woman from Jericho.
If there is a place for her on that list, there is a place for you.