True or False

Well, this thought occurred to me a long long time ago, but it has taken me this long to actually sit down and write about it (big surprise there, right? lol). It was brought back to mind a few weeks ago, so I will try to present it to you now. Basically, during the worship service, Pastor Scavo was speaking about faith without works, and as he worked through the second chapter of James. The following verse really stuck out to me:

James 2:25
25 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?

But, in order to understand my quandary, I ask that you please read the following passage:

Joshua 2:1-7
1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. "Go, look over the land," he said, "especially Jericho." So they went and entered the house of a prostitute [a] named Rahab and stayed there.
2 The king of Jericho was told, "Look! Some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land." 3 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."

4 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. 5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. I don't know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them." 6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) 7 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.

Now, notice here that Rahab tells a direct lie to the guards when they come to inquire about the spies, and in James 2 is hailed as "righteous" for this very deed. So what that got me wondering is, under extreme circumstances, is it ever acceptable to lie for the sake of others? And that of course begs the question of how do you define "extreme circumstances"? Would those be times of war? Persecution (consider the Hebrew Midwives of Exodus 1)? Just where is the line drawn?

My mind immediately went to Nazi Germany. I imagined myself answering the door while Jewish refugees hid somewhere in the back of the house. Would it be considered righteous to mislead those Nazi soldiers for the sake of protecting the lives of those hiding behind me? There are so many stories of the Lord protecting people in that terrible period of history when the guardians of those refugees refused to deny Christ by lying. But could they have really been working too hard to do something that isn't considered to be a sin under those circumstances?

I have often struggled with this question, and have never really been able to come up with a good answer. The best solution that I can come to terms with, but cannot seem to find Scripture directly stating it this way is, if the life of an innocent (in very broad terms...as a die-hard Calvinist, I don't believe that any of us are truly innocent) can be protected, it is probably justified to lie in order to protect that life. But I could be, and wouldn't be surprised to find, that I am wrong. So please fill me in on your personal thoughts and convictions concerning this difficult matter.