And Such were Some of You

Can God save a sex offender? Can He save a prostitute? How about someone who has dabbled in homosexual vice? Is there hope for an adulterer or adulteress? Or the confused young person who has changed his or her gender identity contrary to God’s creation? Our answers to those questions range from, “Yes, grace covers it all” to the opposite position where God turns such offenders over to a reprobate mind as stated in Romans 1:26-28. We believe the Gospel is good news – good news to the lost. But good news must be heard, received and acted upon. Though Christ’s sacrifice is propitious for all sin, salvation is personal and must be received. Calvary offers “blanket protection”, but a person must come under the blanket for refuge. 

God’s Word is clear that there is no forgiveness without repentance, so when we ask if God can save a sex offender, it would be better to simply ask if He can forgive and save any repentant sinner? I have no authority to measure how far the nail-scarred hands of Christ can reach, but I can relate this promise – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness“ (1 John 1:9). The “we”, “our” and “us” in this verse refer to all who have repented and reached out to Christ for mercy. 

We see this illustrated in the story of Rahab. The Bible labeled her as a prostitute, or the archaic word, harlot, used four times in Joshua 6:17,25, Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25. She had paying customers and I don’t see where she was a slave to circumstance. It appears she chose her lifestyle and was fine with her sin, UNTIL she heard of the redeemed people of Jehovah God as His terror fell upon the cities of the Canaanites. She feared the Lord, turned from her sin and proved the change of her heart by hiding the two Hebrew spies and delivering them from the Jericho authorities. Her conversion and testimony were the Old Testament equivalent of what happened in the New when Jesus said to a guilty sex offender, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

But before we address Grace, we must face Law. The Apostle Paul stated emphatically that fornicators, adulterers, effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:10). Millions today sin without conscience, but they cannot do so without cost or consequence. The pleasure of sin is for a season, but the penalty is for a lifetime. Homes are shattered, futures crippled, ministries ruined, and societies weakened. The looser the sexual morals are in a nation, the more unstable is its society. Empires have fallen because of sexual laxity. God’s Law is as cold and hard as the stone tablets upon which it was etched, so with stones in hand, scribes and Pharisees drug a woman “caught in the very act” of adultery to the feet of Jesus, expecting Him to immediately back what was in the Word. 

Though her accusers left the courtroom one by one, convicted in their own consciences, Jesus did not let the woman off the hook. “Neither do I condemn you” was not the excusing of her sin, rather it was a Pre-Calvary declaration that Jesus would pay the penalty of her sin with His own death. If she was “let off the hook” it is only because Jesus was placed on the hook, the cross! All sin carries a death sentence – the Prodigal Son’s sensual sins but also his elder brother’s social sins, the sins of the woman caught in adultery but also the sins of the investigators holding the stones. In Paul’s lists of evils in Romans and Corinthians, and the works of the flesh in Galatians, both types of sins stand side by side as offenses before God.

So, when we look at the conversion of Rahab, we must see her story as an example for all repentant sinners, saved totally on the merits of the cross. In Jericho a red cord hung in the redlight district. A streetwalker became a straight walker. She was adopted into the Hebrew genealogy and was named in the royal lineage of the Savior of the world – “And Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab, and Boaz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the King; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias” (Matthew 1:5,6). Wow! In two short verses we see a prostitute (Rahab), a Gentile widow (Ruth), a serial philanderer (David), and an adulteress (Bathsheba) all in the lineage of Christ. Can God forgive a sexual offender? You better believe it!

But what we are discussing is neither sleezy nor easy. Fallen man is a sinner. Sinning is what sinners do. Someone attempts to excuse himself by saying, “But I was born a homosexual!” The excuse doesn’t stand. I was born a thief, self-interested, and a liar. Does that excuse either of us? Never. In whatever evil state you were born the solution is to be “born again” (John 3:3). Rahab’s experience was typical of the new birth. She became a “new creature” by faith in what she was told by the servants of Joshua, or Yeshua. Joshua, you know, means “God is salvation”, just as the New Testament name Jesus. For all intents she had heard the Gospel – “Hang a red cord in your window and trust that when we come back you will be saved”. Hebrews says – “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not…” (Hebrews 11:31) 

She was justified by faith. Her faith was confirmed by her works but not credited to her works – “Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” (James 2:25) Her actions were typological of New Testament faith. Her confidence hung on the red rope.

That redemption cord is long enough to reach the farthest offender. It reaches from the Garden of Eden where skins were flayed for sins, to Mount Moriah where a ram was slain in the stead of Isaac, through the streets of Goshen where the blood of Passover lambs stained the doorposts, to the Tabernacle brazen altar and blood sprinkled seven times before the Mercy Seat, to the thousands of rams and bullocks sacrificed on Solomon’s Temple altar, to the red juice passed across the table at the Last Supper, ending at the Cross where the red cord’s knot was firmly tied to the crossbeam of Calvary. Every inch of the cord cried redemption. And today I look back just as she looked forward and cry, “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me”.

I am not so amazed whether God can save a sexual offender. What thrills my heart is that He can save any offender. After Paul’s list of sexual and social sins, he opens a door of hope by stating – “And such were some of you: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). “Washed” removes the sin, “sanctified” separates from the perverse society, and “justified” places in right standing before God. This can only occur by a work of the Spirit of God. Freedom from sexual sin is not a matter of willpower but of Holy Ghost power. 

Then as a bonus of divine kindness Rahab’s entire family was drawn into God’s covenant through her act of faith – “And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwells in Israel unto this day; because she hid the messengers, who Joshua sent to spy out Jericho” (Joshua 6:25). I believe in household salvation. Not that Rahab was proxy but that she became the link. To the drug addict, the porn peddler, the woman jumping from bed to bed seeking what only Christ can give, you can be the link that saves your whole family!

Now back to the original question, can God save a sex offender? Yes and no. Yes, if such a one will recognize that sin when it is finished brings forth death. There is death to self-esteem – one girl said, “When I looked at him, I liked him, and when I liked him, I loved him, and when I loved him, I let him, and when I let him, I lost him”. There is death to marriage. Infidelity shatters trust. Sometimes there is physical death. Sex is like fire and when someone plays with fire they get burned. Most certainly there is spiritual death (James 1:15). Yes, sexual sin can be forgiven if sin-acknowledged and sin-confessed is also sin-forsaken.

First, recognize it, then second, repent of it. Metanoia is not only a change of mind but a change of direction. Do an about-face. Third, renounce it. By faith declare that Jesus is your righteousness, that you have been redeemed from the hand of the enemy and that sin now, through Christ, has no dominion over you. Fourth, by the power of the Spirit resist it. Fight the instinct and inclination to go back to the ways of Jericho. As you previously yielded your members as servants of unrighteousness, now yield them to God as being instruments of righteousness. Such were some of you – “were” being past-tense. In Christ, you are a new creation with a new name, new identity and new path ahead. And like Rahab you are not in the lineage “to” the Cross, but in the wonderful lineage “from” the Cross.