THE MALIGNANCE OF SIN
Genesis 4
“Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? This truth that God posed to Cain is something that we need to take careful note of. In simple terms, make sure that your relationship with God is on the right track. If all is well between you and God then there is no need for insecurity. If all is well between you and God then it will be your strength to deal with whatever the world may throw at you.
However, if your relationship with God is impaired by sin and you no longer enjoy his acceptance and favour, then you are vulnerable and in danger of being overcome by sin.
“You must rule over it” is not possible without God. To rule over sin we must return to the cross and acknowledge our sin and accept Christ’s sacrifice and in faith believe that, once again, all is well between us and God.
In this story of man in rivalry with his brother we have a timeless motif of what is at the heart of all that is wrong with man. Pride and, its flipside, insecurity, giving in to the sinful notion that our problems can be solved by taking from others what we do not have.
God’s solution is to give us what we cannot gain for ourselves and in return he calls us to love one another as he has loved us, quenching each other’s need for love and affirmation. It is from the position of being right with God that we have the capacity to obey his command to love one another, reversing the cancer of sin. We must drink deep from the wells of God’s love. This is God’s antidote against sin.
“We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)