By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. (Hebrews 11:04, NKJV)
The second murder in history took place at the dawn of the planet when a bitter, resentful and prideful brother committed premeditated fratricide. He followed the precedent set by Satan himself, the one who was a "murderer from the beginning" and the "father of lies", who, through his deceitful seduction of the woman, Eve, caused her husband, Adam, to willfully rebel against God, thus causing them both to die.
It is clear that Abel, the second from Adam, knew something of God's atoning provision for sin: the shedding of innocent blood. He killed the firstborn of his flock and offered it as a sacrifice, while his elder brother, Cain, offered the fruit of the ground.
We are told that God respected Abel's sacrifice, but not Cain's, and like the self-centered, arrogant, and bloatedly prideful man he was, Cain's countenance fell.
In modern parlance, we mistakenly refer to this as sibling rivalry. It was not. First, there is no indication in the text that Abel competed with his brother on any level. In fact, when Cain invited him out to the killing field, it looks like Abel went willingly, trustingly.
The facts appear to shout these truths about the killer Cain: he had no objection to violence; he was a cheapskate (what did it cost him to offer to God what God himself had nurtured - the fruit of the ground?); and he could not tolerate criticism, implied or otherwise.
In short, Cain was a highly functioning self-worshipper; a man who considered all his thoughts and impulses as golden, and not to be denied. When he couldn't revenge himself against God, he did what in his mind was the next best thing - he sought and achieved vengeance against his godly brother.
Cain is indistinguishable from most members of human society since that time.
Don't be mislead by the simplicity of this historical vignette in Genesis 4. It highlights merely the pertinent details of the crime, and leaves much of the background information unreported. And here in Hebrews 11, the core of the matter is laid bare even more concisely.
It's this: Abel's offering, founded on faith, pleased God. It wasn't that his was blood, and his brother's produce, though that did speak to the comparison between their respective investments of time and effort.
In stark contrast, Cain merely went through the motions to look good. His heart was filled, not with gratitude and reverence for God, but with festering self-adulation.
God honored Abel's sacrifice, and even now, witnesses to the righteousness of the man through his act of faith, thus memorializing forever both the man, and the single path to redemption: faith.
Cain too is indelibly etched in history, as the quintessential symbol of human evil.
Think about it. The motive for the murder did not entail love or money or fame. The motive for the murder was the most banal and primitive imaginable. Cain was offended.
It takes an enormous sense of self-entitlement to go down the senseless path that Cain chose. There are many forms of the same response to offense prevalent today, though most fall short of actual physical murder (but refer to the Sermon on the Mount for the true definition of murder from God's perspective).
His heinous act accomplished nothing but further exile, and an eternal place in infamy, symbolized forever by the mark of Cain.
The man's response when discovered? Whining self-pity, the very opposite of repentance.
The man's legacy of evil: his descendants were even more psychopathically self-centered than was he himself.
I submit that this was the most senseless and evil act of murder in human history. Not only was it the first human-on-human violence, but it was the most puerile and useless.
Above all, it illustrates the root of all sin: pride.
Cain was a selfish monster, a goblin, a fiend - pure and simple. He deprived his brother of life because Abel's continued existence was an insult.
As such, Cain is rightfully held up as the progenitor of all human violence since the dawn of human history.
In the end, Cain, not Adam, is our most vile forebear.
We all inherit his dreaded mark, and only faith in Christ can remove the stain.
