His World, and His Worship
There is yet another feature in the Cain character—open hostility to those who know God's principle of grace to those whom God does accept. See what follows: “And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him” (ver. 8). Abel as a poor helpless man should have demanded Cain's sympathy, but Cain hates the one whom God delights in.
And so it is now. Why is it that you are so angry at a fault in a Christian which you readily excuse in a man of the world, if it be not hatred to the name he bears? If it ought to produce better fruits in him, why not adopt it yourselves? If you are expecting better from him than from the world, why not follow that which you profess to believe will produce the better fruit?
But you have not merely hated the name of Christ, you have been guilty of hating that which God has established in Christ. And here is the same principle that crucified Christ, the desperate recklessness of sin.
You cannot deny that the world has crucified Christ. God's Son is not now in the world. He has been in the world. He became a man amongst men (“the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” John 1:14)—our neighbor. Man saw and hated Him, and summed up his evil in killing Him. I ask you therefore, Has God no such question with you as he had with Cain, “Where is thy brother?” (ver. 9.) Christ has become man's “brother” (it is not the question of God's purpose and counsel here); and is not God demanding of the world, “Where is Christ?” Cain replied, “I know not: am I my brother's keeper?”
Here is a much worse character of sin than Adam's. It is the haughtiness and recklessness of sin. “Am I my brother's keeper?” Not only has there been sin against God, sin that has exiled man from Eden and separated him from the presence of God in peace, but there has been sin also that has led to the hatred and destruction of a brother (blessed and perfect in His ways) whom man has seen. Your disclaiming this displays, and is the proof of, the recklessness of your hearts. “If I had not come and spoken unto them,” said Jesus, “they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause” (John 15:22-25).
The coming of the Son of God into the world has shown the real state it is in.
Why was Christ rejected by man, except that man hated God? That was the only reason that Christ was slain in this world. They hated God, and therefore they hated Him. They hated the light— “Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God” (John 3:20, 21). “They loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil;” and this is their sin, that they have put the Light out of the world. Like Cain, they were “of that wicked one,” and slew their brother (1 John 3:12). Like him too in the motive— “And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.” “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:46.) Even Pilate said, “I find no fault in him” (John 18:38; 19:4, 6). The world has sinned against God in crucifying and slaying Jesus. They hated God, and therefore turned God's Son out of the world, when sent to it in love.
But there is another thing. It is not simply a question of man's having killed the Lord Jesus Christ: the world has now to answer for its resistance of the Holy Ghost. “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost,” &c. The testimony of the Holy Ghost, present in the world as witness of the glory of Christ, is a conviction of the world of sin (John 16:7-15). He has been sent down because Christ has been killed. The necessary testimony of His very presence in the world is this: He would not have been here on earth if Christ had not been killed. He is come in condemnation of the whole world before God. ‘I am here,' He says, as it were, ‘because you have killed your Abel.' It is not a question about particular sins; you have killed God's Son, you are a sinner because you have not believed on Him.
Well then, dear friends, are you the daily companions of those who have rejected Christ, who have killed Christ? Are you of that world, and found with that world in its pleasures and profits, its religion and its lusts, which has done this, and which is still against God and against His Christ, vainly trying to make yourselves pleasant without God? Or have you taken your stand with those who are “of God,” who have God with them and God for them, though the whole world that lieth in the wicked one be against them? The efforts that are being made merely to improve the world are but the sign of the insensibility of Cain. The Spirit of God is come into the world to awaken us to a sense of what has happened in the world, and of the truth of our condition as men.
How came poor Abel to be an accepted worshipper? “And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain,” &c. (ver. 4). He was accepted by blood. There was this testimony in his offering: I cannot go to God as I am; I am driven out of paradise, sin has come in between me and God, and death, “the wages of sin,” must come in between me and God, or I cannot go to God—I cannot go as I am. He took the place of a sinner, and put between himself and God in faith the blood of a victim that had been slain. Unless in his going to God he had owned his necessity that he could not get into the presence of God at all but by blood, he would not have been accepted any more than Cain. But he knew and owned that he could not get to God without blood; he was of faith, and faith ever sees that “without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). He put death—judicially inflicted death (by slaying the victim)—between himself and God, and then he comes into the presence of God as an accepted worshipper. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh” (Heb. 11:4).
But further, Abel suffered with Christ. Having owned that he could not come into the presence of God without the blood of the lamb slain, he takes his place and portion with Christ in rejection. He is a sufferer from the wicked of the world. That is how it must end. That is all that the Christian is to expect at the hands of a world departed from God. “Marvel not if the world hate you” (1 John 3:13).
“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest,” says the Apostle, “by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near,” &c. (Heb. 10:19, 22.) All who come not through Him are rejected, because they do not know that they are so utterly sinful that they cannot come into God's presence except through the blood of His Son. And on the other hand, all who say, I cannot go up except through blood, see that it is the perfectness of love—God's own perfect blessed love—that to meet man's need spared nothing, not even His only-begotten Son. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is the language of faith. He is the only God, who, when I was the chief of sinners, gave His Son to die for me. I know of no God but a God of perfect love, bringing me out of all my vileness, hanging on my neck in my vileness, as did the father to the returning prodigal (Luke 15), and bringing me into His house to rejoice with Him in the exceeding riches of His grace.
We get perfect blessed peace through the blood of Christ, without one pang of conscience left. “The worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sins” (Heb. 10). The apostle does not say that he is not a sinner, that he is not vile; but that God has so loved the vile and sinful as to give His Son unto death to wash away their vileness and their sins. J.N.D.
Concluded from p. 52.