“By faith Abel offered to 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” (Hebrews 11:4).
“Woe to them! for they have gone in the way of Cain” (Jude 11).
Cain and Abel in their approach to God, as expressed in their offerings (Gen. 4), are two typical men. At the present moment there are untold thousands of their followers. Indeed, Christendom is split up into two great camps—Cainites and Abelites.
They were both born outside of Eden, both born in sin and shapen in iniquity, both born of fallen parents, both were sinners as to their own deeds, and both sought a way by which to approach God.
Observe closely the different ways they took. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and brought of the fruit of the ground. Abel was a keeper of sheep, and brought of the firstlings of his flock, and the fat thereof. Cain’s offering was rejected; Abel’s accepted. Why?
Cain brought of the fruit of a cursed ground, the product of his own skill and labour. He was rejected, not because he was a sinner merely, but because his gifts were unavailing. They came from a wrong source. Cain as much as said, “I can bridge the distance between my soul and God. I can bridge it from my side to His. I can by my own efforts and works retrace my steps to God.” What arrogance and ignorance! This is what thousands are doing today.
They are presenting Cain’s offering to God. Perhaps you, reader, are amongst the number. You seek to bridge the distance between your soul and God by turning over a new leaf and doing the best you can. God calls all your righteousness “FILTHY RAGS.” Such is the description God gives of your offering. You can never reach heaven that way, and to persevere is to ensure your own destruction.
Let us now turn to Abel. See, he rears an altar, and upon it he binds of the firstlings of his flock. He slays his lamb, and the fire consumes the victim and the fat thereof.
Abel said, “I cannot approach God on the ground of what I can do. I acknowledge I am guilty, and I offer up this victim as my substitute.”
Dimly his faith pointed on to “THE Lamb of God.” It pointed on to the sacrificial work of Christ upon the cross, when the fire of God’s judgment against sin should fall on Him, and when His precious atoning blood should be shed. On the ground of that Abel was accepted.
Hebrews 11:4, quoted at the head of this paper, gives us in the light of the New Testament the full results of Abel’s offering. Abel obtained witness that he was righteous, “God testifying of his gifts.” Notice, God did not testify of Abel. If He had He must have testified of his guilt, for Abel was a sinner, as was Cain. But God testified of his gifts, and because of the One whom they foreshadowed, even the Lord Jesus Christ, God accounted Abel righteous.
In the same way God can account the believing sinner righteous. He will not testify of you and me, but of Christ. However black we may have been in the past, however failing in the present, God’s unvarying testimony is to Christ. And that testimony must be always the same, always an expression of eternal satisfaction in the One who died upon the cross, the just for the unjust, a testimony rendered all the more full and complete by God raising Christ from the dead and giving Him a place of righteous acceptance in His presence, a testimony not so much in words, but in such definite acts as the resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Christ on high. What a blessed, immutable ground of peace, as unchangeable as Christ Himself!
Where then is room for doubts and fears? There is none. Oh! the relief in taking one’s eye off wretched, disappointing self, and fixing it on Christ, and in knowing that “as He is, so are we in this world.”