Do not be like Cain

It's important to take the step of rejecting the life of Cain. John's direct discussion of hatred and murder is a little disconcerting. But he is teaching us to love, and until we learn to reject being like Cain, we will never learn to love.

1 John 2:7 says that love is ancient: "Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard...Whoever loves his brother lives in the light...." Adam and Eve's children were at the beginning, the first set of brothers to whom the command was directed: "Love your brother." We should imagine that Cain and Abel were very similar. In Genesis 4 we find the story of their birth and growing up, and then the eventful day that led to Abel's death. These brothers were raised by the same loving parents and taught the same values. They grew up in the same environment and were equally well cared for by their parents. They most likely resembled each other physically and were probably close in age. They went together to worship God and bring offerings to him. Everything about them was similar-but they were dramatically different on the inside.

The story in Genesis 4 is short and maddeningly lacking in details. What we are told is that as these two brothers came to worship God, each of them brought an offering. One was accepted by God, and one was rejected. We aren't told what it was about Abel that led God to approve of him, or what it was about Cain that led God to tell him his actions were disobedient, unrighteous, and unacceptable. We should note that God never makes a statement comparing them to each other. As we're going to see in a moment, it was Cain who did the comparing in his anger. God dealt with Abel as an individual, then turned to Cain and dealt with him as an individual.

Some scholars argue that the difference between them was that Abel's was a blood offering involving a death, and Cain's wasn't. That may be the reason, but the Bible doesn't say that. We know that the Jews offered grain offerings later in their history. The notion that a grain offering (or an offering of something else that grew in the ground) should always be rejected is not consistent with what we know of the law.

There was something on the inside that the Lord saw and that distinguished the two brothers. That is why God said to Cain, not comparing him to his brother but speaking to him of his own heart: "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door...." God's word to him was, "It can be turned around, Cain. Restoration is possible. The problems you have on the inside, the rebellion that has led to your making an offering unacceptable to me, can be reversed. Relationship can be restored, things can be put right. But you have some very important choices to make."

God spoke directly to Cain, but Cain didn't listen. He murdered his brother. Both the Old Testament Hebrew word and the New Testament Greek word for murder here mean slaughter. It is a violent, terrible death that our text refers to. So John's word to us is very significant: "Do not to be like Cain."

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 783