Cain and His Descendants (Genesis 4:1-15)

It is a fact that the mark that Cain could have grasped, the cross of Jesus Christ, is engraved on our palms. If we can discover the love of God bestowed upon Cain, it is indeed the grace of God bestowed upon us, the descendants of Cain.

The passage is about the sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel and Cain, the elder brother, killing his younger brother Abel. Cain was a farmer and offered a sacrifice to God from the fruits of the soil, while Abel, a shepherd, offered a sacrifice with a lamb. However, God did not accept Cain's sacrifice. There are various interpretations as to why God did not accept Cain's sacrifice, but the Book of Hebrews finds the reason in the sacrifice of faith. It interprets that Cain's sacrifice was not a sacrifice of faith.

When God did not accept the sacrifice, Cain lowered his head. Cain was angry with God. Then God said to Cain, "Be careful. You might get into big trouble. Sin is crouching at your door. You must manage sin well!" This is similar to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve always walked. The fact that sin is at the door means that sin is not far away but lurking very close to our daily lives. Nevertheless, despite God's warning and admonition, Cain, filled with anger, eventually killed his brother Abel. Cain expressed his resentment towards God by murdering his brother.

At this point, we must read the text again. We thought that we should offer a proper sacrifice to God, like Abel who offered the firstborn of his flock. We thought that we should not offer sacrifices like Cain. However, we can look at the incident of Cain killing his brother from a slightly different perspective. The part we are interested in and want to examine closely is the situation after the two people offered their sacrifices, especially the death of Abel, the younger brother. Most of all, what surprises and puzzles us is this: Abel, who offered a sacrifice that pleased God, was killed. He was killed by none other than his own brother. If we compare Cain and Abel's sacrifices to our modern lives, their sacrifices would represent worship. So, Abel, who lived a model religious life, was killed. Our common sense tells us that if we live a good religious life, we should live a long and healthy life, not be cursed, be the head and not the tail, be blessed when we go in and out, as stated in Deuteronomy.

To mix our surprise and disappointment, Abel was killed for offering a sincere sacrifice. Here, we encounter a part that makes us sigh with pain as we usually read the Bible. In our world, there is always a result for a cause. There is no grave without a reason, and there is no smoke without fire. However, in the Bible, the principle of cause and effect is broken in many places. A representative example is the Book of Job. Job's friends urge him to repent, saying that God does not punish without reason, and perhaps this happened because of a sin he unknowingly committed. On the other hand, Job insists that he knows how much he has done his best to be blameless before God and that God also knows it. Therefore, Job persistently asks God to answer, saying that he cannot be completely ruined like this.

That's right. As can be seen in the case of Job, Christians can also get sick without reason, fail in their endeavors even after praying, and like Abel, offer a faithful sacrifice to God but still face death. In the Bible, there are events that do not fit the common sense of cause and effect.

But there is something hidden in each of these events. This is the part I want to think more deeply about in the text. If we think of Cain and Abel as two representative types in our faith life, which person are we standing behind? Are we in the line of Cain? Or the line of Abel? Are we living like Abel, like Enoch, like Jesus? In front of this question, we cannot help but reveal the deeply hidden face, the color of our hearts, like Cain. No matter how we think about it, we are descendants of Cain, not of Abel. We choose Cain's line as if it were our destiny. At best, we can only be Cains who want to be Abel. It is not that we somehow ended up standing behind Cain from Abel. Cain's blood flows through our bodies. How beautiful must our lives be to stand in the line of Abel?

Look at the fate of the line where Cain, and we, stand. Cain had to live on the land that swallowed his brother's blood, which he had to look at with jealous and angry eyes. "The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground" (v. 10) means vengeance in Hebrew. Cain and his descendants were destined to live on the land of revenge.

However, the Bible does not end the story of Cain and Abel here. It ends at verse 15, not verse 10. In the second half of verse 14:  Cain complains to God about his fate. "Whoever finds me will kill me." The Lord said to him, "Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

The conclusion of the text is that God gives Cain, and his descendants, which includes us, a mark that ensures they will not die. Nevertheless, Cain and his descendants must live in a land filled with vengeance. However, at the same time, the protective certificate given by God is also valid in that vengeful land. Cain must walk the path in the land of vengeance, but he will do so under God's protection. This is the key point when we read the text more deeply.

What the text, and ultimately the Bible, declares to us is the love of God bestowed upon Cain and his descendants who follow him. God sends early and late rain to everyone. God shines sunlight equally on both the good and the evil. Therefore, Cain can also receive God's sunlight and experience a drizzle even when the ground is cracked and his throat is parched. If God had not given Cain a protective certificate to live in the land of vengeance that swallowed Abel's blood, we would not know that Jesus carried the cross to forgive the sins of Cain and his descendants, which includes all of humanity. If the cross of Jesus Christ is not the protective certificate for us, the descendants of Cain, what else could protect us? Therefore, in the presence of God, there is no Cain who is avenged, and no descendants of Cain who are cursed on earth and eternally doomed. God's protective certificate safeguards Cain, and in the same situation, the cross of Jesus Christ protects us, his descendants.

The interpretation that the issue in the story of Cain and Abel was offering crops instead of a lamb as a sacrifice seems unimportant. What we should focus on is the fact that Cain, the murderer who killed his brother, must live in a land of vengeance that produces thorns and thistles through laborious work, just like his father Adam. Yet, in his hand is the mark of God. In the palm of our hands, too, is the mark that Cain could hold - the cross of Jesus Christ engraved upon us. If we can discover the love of God bestowed upon Cain in the text, it is indeed the grace of God that is also bestowed upon us, the descendants of Cain.