Theology on the Lighter Side – Why couldn’t Cain bring a decent offering? – Because he wasn’t Abel!
The first murder was recorded in Genesis, chapter 4. Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, were asked to bring an offering to God. Abel was a shepherd and he brought “the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock,” and Cain was a farmer and he brought “some of his crops” (Genesis 4:4). The Lord looked on Abel’s offering with favor, but not so with Cain’s. Why was Cain not ‘able’ to please God?
The fact is, we don’t know. What we do know is that God can see the heart of man, and so we can speculate that perhaps it was not so much the offering as it was the motivation behind the offering that separated the two.
Hebrews 11:4 – By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
Further, Jude mentions Cain as being unruly and disobedient…
Jude 11 – Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
The application for us today is to bring our sacrifice of service and finances to God with a soft and loving heart, recognizing that He owns it all already.
POSTSCRIPT: A reader offered a much better answer than mine on the difference between the offerings…
“I think my assumption was that Cain’s offering was rejected by God because he was offering his works to God, the produce that he grew in his fields, but God does not want our works as they cannot unite us with God (Ephesians 2:9).
“Abel sacrificed an animal to God. The sacrifice of the Lamb is accepted by God because it does take away our sin and unite us with God (John 1:29).
“This is a foreshadowing of justification, not by works, but by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, or… I’m reading too much into the Bible.”
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
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