CAIN: Being a sinner, death stood between Cain and God. But in Cain’s offering, there was no recognition of that fact. Neither was there a presentation of an innocent, sacrificed life, to meet the claims of Divine righteousness (Romans 3:20-22) or to answer to Cain’s condition as a sinner.
Cain treated God as if He were altogether such an one as himself–one who would accept the sin stained fruit of a cursed earth, offered by one who was no more than a sinner.
Cain’s response bore record that he was not seeking God’s mercy and grace, but was guilty of sinful presumption.
Cain’s worship is the belief that if you do the best you can and offer the best you have, that it will warrant your being accepted by God.
Cain’s worship is the belief that God receives certain men for their goodness, rather than believing that salvation is the free gift of God’s grace to the unworthy sinner.
ABEL: His offering demonstrated that as a guilty sinner, he was deserving of the judgment unto death of his substitutionary sacrifice. He manifested his belief in the fact there was such a thing as a sinner placing the death of another between himself and the judgment for the guilt of sin.
His offering typified that only through the offering of the innocent, righteous life, would God’s demands for righteousness be met (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Hebrews 11:4 tells us that through Abel’s sacrifice, he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts.
God did not bear witness to Abel, but to Abel’s sacrifice, as that which fixed the ground of Abel’s peace and acceptance before God.
THUS, ETERNAL SECURITY! Since the grounds of a sinner’s acceptance is Christ’s offering, then God would have to reject Christ’s offering for a sinner to lose their salvation.
Full, perfect, unqualified justification by faith only, makes God everything and man nothing; and man does not like this, and it causes his countenance to fall and draws out his anger.
Had Abel been accepted on his own merits, Cain’s anger would have had some foundation. But since Abel was accepted on the merits of his sin offering, it was the enmity of Cain’s sinful pride against that offering, that caused his reaction.
SHARING
