Does God Use Sin?

Christians often make the mistake of demanding too much from the lost. These demands, or expectations, are very unfair and serve as but another example of how judgmental we are in our own overly zealous self-righteousness.

Rahab, for example, lied to let the spies go free. This has posed a serious problem for many Christians who wonder how it is possible for a pagan prostitute to lie and still be accepted into the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ. The only available answer is: His grace is abundant. That answer serves not only to explain Rahab's acceptance into the family of Christ, but also our own.

Precisely because she was pagan she was able to lie. You can't expect her to know what to do. She didn't even know what the right thing to do was! She didn't know any better. The laws of Jericho did not, I'm sure, tell its citizens not to lie. They were not under the same laws as the Jews. Perhaps her conscience originally dictated lying as a sin or as something wrong. But that was only at the beginning. Soon there comes (even for us as Christians) a point of cauterization where we no longer discern between right and wrong.

The still doesn't answer the question of God blessing her lie (or at least using that same lie). Yes, grace can explain acceptance, even forgiveness, but how does it explain how that lie was condoned? Well, quite frankly, it wasn't. God does not condone sin. Ever.

He did not bless her lie or her sin, He blessed her. Yes, He did use her lie, but only in the same way that He uses our own frailty and several weaknesses to magnify His own power. As earthen vessels we can crack. But since we are filled with His light that means that He will shine through - even through the cracks.

Thomas Watson probably explained it best, "The wisdom of God is seen in this, that the sins of men shall carry on God's work; yet that He should have no hand in their sin. The Lord permits sin, but doth not approve it. He hath a hand in the action which sin is, but not in the sin of the action."