By Harold Mawela, from my study in Akasia, Pretoria
The winter air bites sharp as a mamba’s tooth here in Akasia this August morning. I sit on my porch, watching the sun drag itself over the Magaliesberg, a rooibos tea warming my hands against the chill. Outside my gate, a nation holds its breath. The petrol price dropped 52 cents this month a small sigh of relief for taxi drivers hauling commuters through the potholed veins of Mamelodi and Soshanguve. But diesel climbed. Paraffin climbed. The poor feel every cent like a knife.
Unemployment hovers at 42.4 percent. Youth joblessness exceeds 45 percent. Weary South Africans are, as one report put it, "weary, yet increasingly hopeful". Murder still averages 65 per day. Organised crime, the president warns, poses the most immediate threat to our democracy. Load-shedding has receded praise God for that small mercy but the lights flicker on and off in our souls.
And yet.
This morning, I am thinking about a thread. A scarlet thread. Thin enough to break with a tug, yet strong enough to save an entire household from the judgment of heaven.
I. The Woman They Called A Harlot
Picture a world where your reputation precedes you like the stench of garbage left too long in the Pretoria sun. Where every introduction is followed by a whisper. Where your name is not a name but a label, a brand, a scarlet letter tattooed across your forehead for all to see.
Rahab of Jericho knew that world.
Five times in Scripture, she is called what she was. The text does not sanitise her. It does not airbrush her past into respectability. The Holy Spirit, in His relentless honesty, records her profession as a harlot not once, but repeatedly. Why? To prove a point that shatters every religious system ever devised by human hands: your history does not have veto power over your destiny.
The city of Jericho called her sinner. The streets named her shame. The neighbours pointed fingers. But Heaven looked at the same woman and saw something else entirely. Heaven saw an ancestor of the Messiah. Heaven saw a name inscribed in the genealogy of Jesus Christ Himself.
Let that sink into your spirit like rain into parched Highveld soil: What the world calls your disqualification, God calls your qualification for His glory.
II. The Law of the Scarlet Cord
Let me state this as a principle, as a law of the Kingdom as immutable as gravity:
Your past cannot cancel your faith. But your faith can cancel your past.
Think about it. Rahab did not deny where she had been. She did not pretend to be what she was not. She simply believed what she heard—that the God of Israel was God in heaven above and on earth beneath. And that belief, that raw, unpolished, desperate faith, rewrote her entire existence.
She hung that scarlet cord from her window. A thread. A flimsy, fragile-looking thing. Any passerby could have tugged it loose. Any gust of wind from the Jordan Valley could have torn it away. But that thread was not the source of her salvation it was the sign of her faith. The source was the promise of the spies. The source was the God who had parted the Red Sea and was about to flatten the walls of Jericho.
The Law of the Scarlet Cord is this: Faith does not ask where you have been; it only asks whether you will believe now.
You see, the scarlet cord is a symbol of redemption and salvation. Its colour speaks of blood the blood of the Passover lamb, the blood of Christ's atoning sacrifice. When Rahab hung that cord, she was not just marking her house for deliverance. She was making a confession. She was saying, in effect: "I am not who I used to be. I am staking my life on a promise. I am tying my future to the God of Israel."
And what happened? Judgment passed over her house. The walls came down, but she and her family stood safe.
III. A Personal Testimony: The Ghosts of Akasia
I remember a man who used to live three streets from here in Akasia. Let me call him Thabo. Thabo had a past that followed him like a shadow in the afternoon sun. He had done time at Kgosi Mampuru. He had lost his family, his job, his reputation. Every time he applied for work, the question came: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" Every time he tried to rebuild, the ghost of his past rose up to haunt him.
One Sunday, Thabo walked into our church. He sat at the back, head bowed, shoulders slumped under the weight of shame. He had heard the gospel before heard it and dismissed it as a crutch for the weak. But that day, something broke. The message was about Rahab. About a scarlet cord. About a God who does not ask where you have been, only whether you will believe now.
Thabo wept like a child. He surrendered his brokenness to Jesus Christ. And something shifted in the heavenlies.
Now, I am not saying his past disappeared. The records still exist. The memories still surface. But the power of that past the power to define him, to limit him, to disqualify him was shattered. Thabo is not a pastor today. He is not a celebrity. But he is a free man. He is a son of God. He has tied his scarlet cord to the promise, and judgment has passed over his house.
The Scripture declares unequivocally: "By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient". Notice: by faith. Not by moral perfection. Not by a spotless record. By faith.
IV. The Argument From Reason
Let us define our terms clearly. What is reputation? It is what others say about you based on what you have done. What is redemption? It is what God does for you based on what Christ has done. The two are not the same. They are often in direct opposition.
The argument can be formulated thus:
Premise 1: Every human being has a past that contains sin, failure, and shame.
Premise 2: Human society judges and often condemns based on that past.
Premise 3: God's redemption, accessed through faith in Jesus Christ, does not erase the historical facts of the past but removes their eternal penalty and temporal power to define identity.
Conclusion: Therefore, no human being is permanently disqualified from God's purpose by their history.
A common objection is: "But what about the consequences? I still have to live with what I did. The scars are real. The damage is done."
Indeed, the scars are real. Rahab still lived in Jericho. Thabo still had a criminal record. The consequences of sin are not always removed in this life. But here is the deeper truth: Consequences are not condemnation. The effects of your past may linger, but the identity of your past does not have to define you. The cord may be thin, but the promise behind it is unbreakable.
The evidence strongly supports this. Look at Rahab. She is listed in the genealogy of Jesus. The same New Testament that calls her a harlot also celebrates her faith. She stands in the Hall of Faith alongside Abraham and Moses. Her scarlet cord became her scarlet letter—not of shame, but of salvation.
V. The African Context: Our National Scarlet Cord
Now, let me speak to my people. To South Africans who feel that our nation's reputation is irredeemable. To those who look at 42.4 percent unemployment, at crime that averages 65 murders a day, at corruption that has hollowed out our institutions, and conclude: "This country is finished. There is no hope."
I say to you: South Africa is Rahab.
Our past is checkered. Our reputation is stained. The world points fingers. The headlines scream judgment. The walls of our Jericho seem impregnable. But the God who saw a harlot and made her an ancestor of the Messiah sees a nation and says: "I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you."
Our national scarlet cord is not a thread of wool it is the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for the sins of the whole world, including the sins of this beautiful, broken, beloved land. When we hang that cord from the window of our faith, when we stake our future not on our own righteousness but on the promise of God, judgment passes over us.
Does this mean we ignore our problems? No. Rahab did not ignore the walls of Jericho. She made a plan. She hid the spies. She negotiated for her family's safety. Faith is not fatalism. Faith is action rooted in trust. We must work for justice, fight corruption, create jobs, build peace. But we do so not in our own strength, and not because we are worthy, but because we are believers.
VI. The Call to Discipleship
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where theology becomes life.
You will never possess what you are unwilling to pursue. If you want a redeemed reputation, you must pursue the Redeemer. Not a religious system. Not a moral checklist. Not the approval of men. You must pursue Jesus Christ.
Your destiny is decoded in your daily habits. What you repeat, you become. What you neglect, you forfeit. Rahab's faith was not a one-time event it was a daily alignment with the promise. She hung the cord. She kept it there. She did not take it down when the walls began to tremble.
Attack is the proof that your enemy anticipates your success. The devil does not waste his arrows on the already defeated. If you are under attack for your past, it is because your future threatens hell itself. Stand firm. Tie your scarlet cord. Let judgment pass over your house.
God loves you because of who you are, but He blesses you because of what you do. Your identity is secure in Christ. But your inheritance is accessed through obedience. Rahab believed and she acted. Faith without works is dead. The cord must be hung.
VII. The Mystery of the Messiah
And now, the deepest mystery: Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, became the mother of Boaz, who became the father of Obed, who became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David, from whose line came Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.
Think about that. The scarlet cord that hung from a prostitute's window in a doomed city became the thread that led to the Cross. The blood of the Passover lamb, the blood of the covenant, the blood of the Son of God—all foreshadowed by a single, fragile, defiant thread.
Your scarlet cord may look insignificant. Your faith may feel flimsy. Your past may seem disqualifying. But the God who weaves history from such threads says: "I have not forgotten you. I have not abandoned you. I am making you part of a story larger than you can imagine."
VIII. The Final Word
Therefore, reason itself, illuminated by Scripture and confirmed in our deepest longings, compels us to acknowledge that:
Your history does not have veto power over your destiny.
What the city calls sinner, Heaven calls ancestor of the Messiah.
Faith does not ask where you have been; it only asks whether you will believe now.
Tie your scarlet cord to the promise. Let judgment pass over your house. Let the walls fall. Let the new day dawn.
Prayer
Father, I thank You that You are the God who sees beyond the label. You saw Rahab and called her faithful. You saw Thabo and called him son. You see me—all of me, the shame and the sin, the failure and the fear—and You say: "Come. Believe. Live."
I tie my scarlet cord to the promise of Jesus Christ. I stake my life on His blood. I declare that my past does not define me, that my reputation is redeemed, that I am a new creation in Christ.
Let judgment pass over my house. Let mercy reign in my heart. Let faith outweigh my failures, today and every day.
In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, my Redeemer and my Lord.
Amen.
From my study in Akasia, Pretoria, where the winter sun climbs over the Magaliesberg and a nation holds its breath, I declare: the scarlet cord still saves. Tie yours today.
Harold Mawela
Akasia, Pretoria
August 2026
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