Genesis 4:6-11 – Christ, my killer’s keeper

⁶ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ 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.” Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.⁹ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”¹⁰ The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. ¹¹ Now you are under a curse

Now you are under a curse. Okay, what else is new? Haven’t we been under a curse since humanity fell in our first father Adam? Like a constant refrain this declaration of our condemnation rings out as if it’s the antithesis of a final doxology – as it was and is and ever shall be world, without end – you are under a curse. We’ve lived our whole lives under this curse, and tasted its bitter fruits in abundance. Sin, sickness, famine, poverty, violence, death. You are under a curse. You are living in the reign of the coronavirus, SARS COV-2. It brings isolation, a loss of income, it brings suffocation, organ failure, it brings death. Just a quick cursory look at the news from the last few months and the declaration is unmistakably still in place. Hordes of locust plague East Africa, India, the Middle East, and it is the worst seen in decades. And I’m sure the news of the unnecessary death of George Floyd in Minnesota has not escaped you. The world is just as broken as it has ever been. As it was, and is, and ever shall be, world without end. Until this eternal curse was met by the eternal God. When God became man, your curse met its end. In the finitude of the infinite God, Christ bore the worlds cross up to His throne on the holy hill of Zion, Golgotha, where He, robed in his kingly garment of naked flesh and crowned with the ornament of the fall, became sin for us. Cursed is He who hangs on a tree. That condemnation that seemed so eternal, so ever-present, and so inescapable, it died with Christ 2000 years ago. And we, Christians, we died with Him upon that cross. And by faith, we rose with Him in new life. For the liar, the cheater, the adulterer, and even the murderer that declaration of life under a curse is exchanged for a promise of eternal life in union with God in Christ. In Christ, our consignment to the curse is exchanged for a future hope that we look forward to in faith. The suffering we now endure serves no longer to declare the ever-present curse of sin, but now in Christ, it is a slow and gradual bludgeoning to death of our old Adam. In Adam, all die, but in Christ, our old Adam died. My brothers, death is dead, famine is starved, poverty is penniless, and the reign of sickness has been pronounced terminal. The endless reign of the curse of sin has met its end in the reign of Christ. In our anger, we killed the one man who had done right. But Christ was His killer’s keeper. In His death, you have been made alive. As the world cries for vengeance upon those who will not be their brother’s keeper, there remains only one answer to the question of sin and suffering, and it is the cross. As the world cries for vengeance we must cry for forgiveness. As we approach the day of Pentecost, we must remember the words of Christ in John 20, “And with that, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven.” Healing and hope for a lost and disheartened people will not be found in the execution of justice upon the Cains of this world, of such are we, nor will it be found in vaccines, or ventilators, not in employment, nor in plenteous harvests. The breath of new life that Christ breathed into His church, the new creation, is the breath of forgiveness. Rise daily, forgive daily, and await death’s final end. This Pentecost, let us remember that there was only one true Abel who did right in the sight of the Lord, whom we killed. But Christ was and is and ever shall be, His killer’s keeper, world without end, Amen.