This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. 1John 3:10-15
John gives some insight here into the account of Cain and Abel. God required, after the original sin, a regular offering or sacrifice for the sin. This was to remind people that in order to have a right standing with God, sin must be atoned for. Although this was progressively spelled out that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin, and that couldn't just be a pint but it symbolized the giving of a life for the one who sins because the soul that sins shall die - we don't know how much Cain would have understood but we do know he knew what was required and by faith should have done it. Instead, since he was a farmer and was proud of his skills, he offered his bests plants as a sacrifice to God. We can't say that he didn't give his best or that he didn't give sacrificially - we don't know. What we do know is that he didn't give the offering that was proscribed. He thought he could get to God his own way and God said no.
Verse 13 says that Cain wasn't mistaken or wrong but his actions were "evil". Why evil? I think we have to look back to the original sin in the garden. God, after giving man and woman paradise and most of all His presence and love, gives them one rule and says, "don't eat from the tree or you'll die." Instead of justly ending the creation (we would think after all that work maybe it can be spared but it was no work for God) He made a way to keep the relationship going until it could totally be fixed with the blood and death of His only Son and Cain says, "I want another way." Isn't this what we see today? Mankind saying, "Why is God so narrow minded?" "Why is there only one way?" "So, all those other religions are wrong, and billions are going to Hell because Jesus is the only way? That's not fair!" The answer to that is why is there even one way? God should have rightly ended things but He didn't and to complain about that is not just wrong - it's evil.
And it's not just that - it's the underlying lie of all religions except Christianity. All religions except one say that the way to get to God is our best efforts. Cain gave his best efforts convinced God would be pleased and He wasn't. This is the lie that Satan wants us to believe and it isn't an honest mistake but evil from the evil one to believe it and stand before God waiting for the pat on the back and hearing, "Depart from me, I never knew you." God, in His mercy gave us a way back and it's by faith receiving the prescribed way of coming into His presence through the substitutionary blood and death of His righteous Son on the cross and that's the only way. The way of Cain is the evil path of deception and look where it leads - hatred, murder, getting cast from the presence of God and a lineage and harvest of darkness and hatred of God.
Which side are you on? Are you trusting your best efforts to get you to God? That's the way of Cain and it leads to nowhere good. Or are you by faith trusting in Christ's death on the cross for your sins? That leads to love and life eternal. God gave you a choice. Choose Abel's way. It's not an easy life - Abel died a brutal death yet still lives in glory - but it is the right way.
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