Your Sin and Mine

"of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

  you shall not eat"

Genesis 2:17

This is not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   But it's a cool looking tree!

Cain.  The first baby born in the Bible.  The first baby born ever.  Can you imagine Adam and Eve's joy?

And yet... 

The man is so infamous that his very name has come to mean trouble.   His crime was killing his brother, and for no better reason than he was mad at him.  And he really didn't even have a legitimate cause for being angry with Abel.  They both brought sacrifices to God ~ Cain an offering of "the fruit of the ground," and Abel "of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat."

Both offerings represented their work,  Cain being a tiller of the ground, and Abel a keeper of sheep.  But God saw what we maybe would not have.  God respected Abel and his offering, but not the offering of Cain.  Cain was angry, and when the opportunity arose, he killed him. 

It's both horrific and symbolic somehow, that the first baby born in the world would commit what many think of as the worst sin of all ~ murder.  But I think the fact that we think of murder as the "worst" sin is due to successful propaganda on the part of the devil.

Of course, murder is a wicked, heinous crime.  Its consequences are not only serious, they are permanent.  There's no undoing what has been done, no matter how remorseful the murderer. 

But I think the devil wants us to keep murder as the #1 crime, for two reasons.  First, it distracts us.  We feel better when we can point to someone who's a "worse" person than we are.  So we comfortably keep committing our "lesser" sins, feeling that they aren't that big a deal.

But the second reason for his desire to delude us regarding sin, is that looking at Cain to be our reference point takes the heat off of the devil.  So to speak.  Maybe he likes the heat.  Let's say it takes the focus off of him.

There's no mention of satan in the account of Cain and Abel, but there's no getting around his participation the Adam and Eve's sin.  So I think he'd rather we shake our heads and "tsk-tsk" at Cain's sin.

But it's really, really important that we not take our eyes off of Adam and Eve's sin.  Theirs was truly the first sin.  And while most of us will never be murderers, we have and do follow in the footsteps of Adam and Eve's sin ~ disobedience to God.

It's very symbolic that the first sin was disobedience to God, because really, that's what all sin is.  Putting self before God.  What we think, what we feel, what we want, we put ahead of what He has said.

So if you think you're a better person because your sins are more acceptable than someone else's, think again.

~ "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" ~

Romans 3:23

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