The Lord Who Seeks to Save

Genesis 4:6–7 (ESV) The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

For all the bad press Cain gets as the first murderer, the jealous brother and greedy... you can't afford to miss the Hero of his story. God did not want Cain to go bad. He reached out to him in his hour of frustrating madness. 

Abel was doing things well, his offerings were wonderful. Yet we do not have recorded a conversation between himself and God. He dies humanity's first death without even a recorded sentence to his name. 

But Cain gets a ton of ink in the Bible's first few chapters. He's the first born. He's on God's mind. He's the one who takes center stage in the post-paradise reality of creation. And God seeks to save him from himself. If Cain would have listened, he would have been spared and lived a long life. Instead, his testimony is one of hard-heartedness, jealous rage, and then a sense of entitlement when the punishment is handed down, "My punishment is greater than I can bear!" 

Yet God still seeks to spare Cain. He puts a mark on him demanding seven-fold vengeance should anyone harm him. God in grace is consistently stepping in to spare this hopeless sinner. 

For all the talk that the God of the Old Testament is angry and mean while the New Testament God is kind and loving... that sentiment (ridiculous even in sound) is just not true. So far in 4 chapters we have a gracious God who gives the world to humans who want nothing more than to disobey him and hurt each other. All the while, the only calm and kind character in the plot is the God of heaven Himself!

Here's what else this passage teaches me. 
Because of God's work for us in Christ at the cross, we NO LONGER have to obey the lusts of the flesh. We can obey God's voice. We can bear up under the temptations as God provides His way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13). 

The Lord has come to intervene. He has shed His blood so that we need not live for ourselves and obey the shameful desires of our flesh. Let THIS be the realities of your life. The One who calls you to obedience has made every way necessary for it to happen. 

Romans 6:11–12 (ESV) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

Romans 6:14 (ESV) For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.


Romans 6:17 (NLT) Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you.

1 John 3:9 (ESV) No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

These are your truths, Christian. Claim them, recite them, live through them.

He has saved you.