Turning

Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wonderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me." 

- Genesis 4:13-14

It was the bloggers over at Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis (John Piper's church) who mentioned that every pastor should blog if only to say what they weren't able to say on Sunday. 

I'm heeding that call faithfully. 

This past Sunday brought part two of our "Beautiful News" series, and we investigated together as a church the role of sin in the story of Jesus. Specifically, we asked how the news of Jesus Christ defined evil, and if that definition could possibly hold anything beautiful in it. Strangely enough, we headed back to Genesis to answer this question. 

At this point in Genesis 4, Cain has already carried out the first murder in scripture, and God has confronted him saying, "What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!" Caught red-handed, it appears that God resolves the issue by bringing Cain to justice, imposing a harsh punishment that goes beyond even what is told to Adam and Eve. 

Yet the first killer of the Bible has more to say. Cain, unlike his parents, speaks after he is caught. And though what he says sounds quite remorseful, I'd like to argue that there's not an ounce of true repetance in any of it. 

Allow me to explain. Though the English word "repent" comes from the Latin word "to be sorry", the original Hebrew word literally means "to turn" or "to return." Cain certainly felt very sorry that he was receiving punishment, and perhaps as a result even regretted what he had done to his brother, but his complaint is striking in its lack of "turning." Cain doesn't even tell God, "I'll never do anything like this again."Instead, his entire complaint is focused on how this punishment will affect him, bearing witness to the same self-centeredness that led to his taking of his brother's life. Even though Cain felt a great deal of sorrow, it was all for himself. 

Sin, in the story of Jesus, is our effort to take God's place in our lives and in the lives of others. Whether it's something drastic like taking the life of another, or something small like allowing resentment to grow in our hearts, sin is us telling God that we should call the shots. True repetance, then, is simply the total surrender of that attitude. Repetance is admittting to God that life, death, and even righteousness are not in our hands, but in His, and that's the way it should be. 

This is both much easier, and much harder than what we might typically think repentance is. Easier because it is simply a letting go of what wasn't ours in the first place. Harder because that surrender must be total, otherwise it won't be any kind of surrender at all.