Yup, quite a bit of flipping and twisting I'd say.
James 2:25 (KJV)
25 Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? ...then lied! Oh, that part isn't in there.
But if I flip it this way...yup, she was justified by her lie and for being a harlot. Oh wait...
Am I judging her? Nope, just sticking to what it actually says.
Um yeah, that's not what it actually says.
It seems two things are in order; a lesson in grammar and a refreshing of the order of events in the story of Rahab and the spies.
First, the order of events;
Joshua 2:1 (NIV)
Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]tim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
(1) The spies arrive at Rahab's house.
Joshua 2:2-3 (NIV)
The king of Jericho was told, “Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”
(2) The king demands Rahab to turn over the spies.
Joshua 2:4-6 (NIV)
But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.
(3) Rahab has already hidden the spies, they're still up on the roof, and she blatantly lies to the king's men about it. The king's men fall for it and are successfully misled by her lie.
In verses 8-13 Rahab then tells the spies that she knows that the Lord has given them the land, and then asks them to show kindness to her and her family, saving them from death, because of her kindness to the spies. Then the spies respond;
Joshua 2:14 (NIV)
“Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.”
(4) The spies thank her for saving their lives, and then
encourage her to continue her deceit by not telling anyone what they are doing.
Joshua 2:15-16 (NIV)
So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. She said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.”
(5) Rahab sends the spies "a different way" so they are not caught by their pursuers.
So to briefly recap, the order of events is, the spies arrive at Rahab's house and she hides them, the king's men demand she turn them over, Rahab lies by saying she didn't know where they came from and by saying they had left the city, the spies thank her for her kindness and for sparing their lives and encourage her to keep up her deceit by not telling anyone what they're doing, and finally Rahab sends the spies "a different way" to ensure they are not caught by their pursuers.
Please note that nowhere in those events did the spies admonish Rahab for her lie. In fact, the spies were demonstrating a tacit approval of her lie by allowing themselves to be hidden in the first place. They were placing Rahab in a situation where she had to lie to successfully
hide them.
It has been said in previous discussions on this topic that Rahab was a "heathen" and didn't know any better. But the spies sure did, and they did absolutely nothing to stop her from what they described as her "kindness". It has also been said in previous discussions that God could have protected the spies had Rahab not lied, but that makes one wonder why the spies, who were not "heathen" by any stretch of the imagination but rather men from the army of the Lord, agreed to be hidden in the first place. It's almost like these people are upset that the story didn't take place the way they think it should have, because it offends their legalistic mindset, thus the need to explain it away.
Now the grammar lesson;
James 2:25 (NIV)
In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?
First, let's put to rest the silly notion that Rahab was considered righteous for being a prostitute by pointing out that "the prostitute" is simply a qualifier of Rahab. It would be like saying "Bob the builder". It's simply an explanatory phrase.
Secondly, the scripture says that Rahab was considered righteous "for what she did
when..." The "when" here indicates that we're about to be told specifically "what she did" that made her be considered righteous.
So "what she did" was gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a "different direction". Now unless we completely shut our brains off, we can see from the text that the way that Rahab accomplished "what she did" was by lying. Had she not hidden the spies and lied to the king's men about it, she would have never been able to do "what she did".
Many Christians would feel better about the story of Rahab if the Bible would have explicitly addressed the lie of Rahab as being wrong. But it doesn't. Not only does it NOT say that Rahab was wrong by lying, it actually commends her for "what she did", twice. Of all the many people in scripture that "did" things, God saw it fit to include Rahab and say that she was considered righteous for "what she did". There is no footnote that says, well, she didn't know any better, or, God could have protected the spies even if she hadn't lied, or any of the other legalistic claptrap that we sometimes hear when discussing Rahab.
I sometimes wonder if God included Rahab in James to offend our idea of what and/or who should be considered righteous. Rahab demonstrated in works that she was more concerned with the safety of the Lord's men than in whether she would feel bad about her lie. I sincerely wonder if that's why God didn't deliberately send them to her instead of someone else, because some legalistic fool may well have chosen to not lie so that they would feel good about themselves at the expense of the lives of the spies, putting their own view of themselves above the safety of another.
Of course I'm not suggesting that lying is OK. Truth and honesty should prevail. But then, so should common sense. Were any of us to find ourselves in the situation described in the OP, I would hope that we would be far more concerned with the safety of the person we were responsible for than in trying to come up with the right wording so that we felt good about ourselves.