Human Response 11: Lie and Cover Up

Genesis 4:9 And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?

Cain had just murdered his brother, Abel, when the Lord came to him with the question, ”Where is your brother?” Of course, God knew what happened and where Abel was, but He was confronting Cain to give him chance to repent, to fess up, to be forgiven and restored. However, Cain chose to respond with a lie, an excuse, and a cover up. He stupidly responded by avoiding repentance, spurning God’s implicit offer of love and forgiveness.

Cain’s response exemplifies the stupidity of sinners after the Fall, First, he outright lied, ”I know not.” We see how far man has fallen into sin and ignorance. How did he think he could get away with covering up his crime by lying to the Lord, who knows everything? But even we today mistakenly think our sinful thoughts, hurtful words, and harmful deeds escape God’s notice, while we hope He notices and accounts for the good things we do. We might know we can’t lie to God, but we somehow figure that we can live a lie by keeping up appearances and keeping other people from knowing who we really are and what we really do. Or we just ignore God, thinking we can keeping Him from noticing our sinfulness or confronting us with it.

Secondly, Cain made excuses and rationalizations: ”Am I my brother’s keeper?” In man’s newfound stupidity he didn’t know that ”Yes, you are. You love the brother and the neighbor, take care of them and look after them.” Not only did he fail to keep, but he actively killed him. He sinfully thought only of looking after himself. And so we today do not regard others as ”more important than ourselves.”

The proper response would be: ”I am the sinner. I am the killer. I confess. I repent. Have mercy on me and forgive my sin.”