Blood That Speaks

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Look at him! Not so high and mighty now, is he? The shepherd has been struck, and all his sheep have scattered. As his breath leaves and his blood drips to the ground, he doesn’t look much like one whom the Lord God favors. His father was unable to protect him, as even now his body bears the marks of the instrument used to bring him death. What good did his sacrifice do for him now?

Why, I believe that the Lord God had even declared him to be perfect. Him… perfect! In all truth, he was the one who was the renegade. He went out into the countryside chasing after his stupid sheep! I, on the other hand, followed in my father’s footsteps, working in the fields. It’s backbreaking work, and the yield is limited due to insects, weeds, poor soil conditions, and a lack of water.

But the ground isn’t my only adversary; so is the harsh, demanding Creator of heaven and earth. The shepherd was always His favorite. It just isn’t fair!

To make matters worse, I’ve always been a tremendous disappointment to my mother, too. Her words at my birth indicate she thought that I was to be both Yahweh Himself and man. She and my father had been promised a Savior Who would defeat Satan and deliver them from this world.

Even though my parents and my useless brother trust in the Lord’s promise, I refuse. If I’m going to be saved, then I’m going to have to do it all by myself. The Lord God doesn’t love me and doesn’t care for me at all. He rejects what I attempt to do, and I have come to hate Him, not only because He is not pleased with what I attempt to do, but also because He regards my brother and what he does so highly.

Consider my complaint. Both my brother and I brought an offering to the Lord. My younger brother provided a sacrifice from the firstlings of his flock. Yahweh was well-pleased with, and had great regard for, that offering from Abel. I brought a sacrifice as well. Because I am a tiller of the ground, it came from the earth, and it was watered with sweat from my brow. And despite that, my offering did not please the Lord God, for He did not regard it as acceptable.

Why was that? Is it that the Lord God chooses one to show His favor and elects another to be cursed? Did I offend Him in the way I prepared the offering—or in the way I presented it? Could it be that Yahweh is pleased only with animal sacrifices? Does He have something against farmers? Or is the secret of the mystery in the blood? Does God require blood? After all, I have been told that Yahweh shed innocent blood to cover the naked shame of my parents when they sinned. Who knows the answer? At any rate, my offering to the Lord God was not acceptable. He came to me and said: “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:6-7).

Wow, that’s a punch in the gut! Not only was my offering not acceptable, but I’m not acceptable! Is it any wonder that I am angry at the Lord God? He tells me that sin is like a fierce animal waiting to devour me. I must master it. I have tried—time and again. Still, I fail to the point where I am sinning when I bring my offering. My prophet brother brings an offering, and it is accepted. I guess that I’m a sinner and that he doesn’t sin. That must be it. Oh, how I hate Him for all of this!

What was I supposed to do? I could not please or appease God by my works in order to be saved—in fact, it only made matters worse. Was it within my capabilities to bruise even the heel of Yahweh? Within my heart, I would have liked to have destroyed this One, but I could not get to Him. If I were able to ascend to His abode, I would still not be powerful enough to slay Him.

Still, I’ve gained the upper hand. One deed I was able to accomplish—it was within my power to slay the one whom He favored. Why keep my brother around? With one swing, I could hurt the Lord God and rid myself of His righteous son.

My younger brother accepted my invitation to go out to the field. And, once in the field, I rose up against him and struck him! Now look at him. As his breath leaves him, his lifeblood fertilizes the very ground where I grow my crops!

The Lord asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” Instead of taking this opportunity to confess his sin, Cain deflects: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord gets more explicit: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand” (Genesis 4:9-11).

In searching the Scriptures to find an example of an unbeliever who sought the promise of God’s blessing, we need read no more than four chapters. In locating one who attempts to appease the Almighty through works of the Law apart from faith, we need only behold the first one born to Adam and Eve.

As the spiritual head of his household, Adam certainly must have relayed the account of what the Garden was like—of what immense joy there was to be holy communion in, with, and under the Lord. He taught his children the fundamental teachings of the Word: The Fall into sin, the Atonement, the Person and the Word of the Savior, and the Resurrection to eternal Paradise.

To be right with the Lord God in Paradise—that was what both Cain and Abel wanted. Two separate ways to claim eternal life with Yahweh were before them, and they went their separate ways. The difference came neither on account of the type of offerings they brought nor because of their occupations. There was neither predestination involved, nor a blessing based upon order of birth.

The writer of Hebrews informs us why Abel’s gift was more acceptable to the Lord: “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts” (Hebrews 11:4).

Cain sought to earn God’s righteousness apart from faith. Abel believed the promise of the Seed of the woman as Savior, trusted the Lord to fulfill His promise, and therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Thus, God declared Abel to be right and accepted his fruit of faith as a righteous act.

 If Abel’s blood still speaks on the positive way of faith, then Cain’s life under the Law shouts the futility of seeking the promise without faith. At one time, Cain was a part of the church visible, and yet, he sought to gain the promise apart from faith. Isaiah tells us the Almighty is greatly displeased with and has no regard for those who, like Cain, go through the motions of worship apart from faith.

The faith that justifies, however, is no mere historical knowledge, but the firm acceptance of God’s offer promising forgiveness of sins and justification. Cain knew the historical facts about what the Lord had done and what He had promised to do. His problem was that he did not trust in them, but instead, sought to appease God’s wrath with a work of the Law—an offering without faith.

To teach and to practice that one must earn or buy God’s favor, in full or in part, is nothing less than legalism—the seeking of salvation through the way of good works rather than the way of grace. In its grossest form, this system teaches that Jesus is a new Moses Who has come to be a great Lawgiver. In doing so, Jesus is taught as the Dispenser of God’s wrath instead of the Bearer of it!

But just what is this “faith” that pleases God? How much is needed? What is its nature and quality? Is it the amount of faith that makes a sinner right before God, or is it the focus of the faith? The most important thing about faith is neither its quality nor its quantity but its object. It is saying with Paul, “I know in Whom I have believed (2 Timothy 1:12). Faith is our connection with God, and its power is not in the connection but in the God with whom we are connected. If we are united with His unlimited resources, then things that are impossible become possible to us. Faith is thus an all-or-none proposition.

Without faith, no one is able to please the Lord. In the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, Christ offers the forgiveness that He earned for the whole world on the cross. Still, in addition to the water and the Word, faith is necessary—faith which trusts such Word of the Lord. For those little ones who are brought to the blessings given through this washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5), the faith that God requires in Baptism, He gives in Baptism. For others, like the Ethiopian official, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). In such cases, baptism is a seal of the righteousness of the faith that he was given (Romans 4:11).

The Sacrament of the Altar also requires faith to receive the blessing intended by God. The Body born of Mary and the Blood shed on the cross are given in Holy Communion along with the promise of forgiveness of sins and the strengthening of faith. But the one who does not believe the Words of Christ in the Holy Supper will receive the opposite of the Lord’s blessing. For thus Paul writes: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.… Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (1 Corinthians 11:27–29). When the promise is received by faith, there is a blessing. Without faith, the communicant receives judgment.

Cain was offended at the Promise of the Savior and sought to please Yahweh apart from faith. It could not be done. When confronted by the Lord with the firstborn’s sin of murder and having felt the burden of the consequences of sin, Cain admitted: “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Genesis 4:13).

Cain was absolutely correct! He realized that he could not meet the righteous and just demands of the Law of God. The Promise was not, and is not, able to be attained by way of the Law. From this generation would the Lord require the blood of all the prophets who had been slain from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the temple (Luke 11:51). Still, Cain hardened his own heart as he refused to lift up his eyes in faith to the Sacrificed One—the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).

Thousands of years later, there would be another who went in the way of Cain (Jude 11; see also FC SD VI 16). This other man sought to have the Promise apart from faith. He, too, would attempt to make an offering that would take away his guilt and wipe the slate clean with God. Just as it was quite impossible for Cain, it was impossible for Judas Iscariot.

Judas’ repentance was apart from faith. When he saw that he was condemned, he sought to buy a clean conscience with thirty pieces of silver, announcing his sorrow over his transgression: “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). But repentance is more than being sorry for one’s sin; it is looking to Christ for the absolution. Having made an offering by throwing the money back into the Temple, Judas looked only into himself. There, he saw no hope, but instead he found hypocrisy, murder, guilt, shame, despair, and hell (Matthew 15:19), and his conscience would not excuse him.

Thus, in despair of his self-accusations and the rejection of the one Sacrifice made even for him, Judas left his offering in the Temple and hanged himself. But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.’ So they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field as a burial place for strangers. There that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day” (Matthew 27:6-8).

Both Judas and Cain had fields of blood in their times—one at the time of his brother's death and one after the time of his own death. Both fields, however, were apart from the field of Blood located under the cross of the Lamb Who was bruised for our iniquities, smitten by God, and upon Whom the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53). Cain sought to please God and receive a blessing from the Lord by bringing an offering to Him without faith. Judas sought to be forgiven of His betrayal of the Son of God apart from faith.

Abel was murdered, and out of the ground the voice of his blood cried out to God for vengeance (Genesis 4:10). This transgression of God’s Law demanded that a payment for sin be made. Jesus, too, was slain and His shed Blood cried out to the Lord as He gave the Spirit: “It is finished!” (John 19:30). This proclamation of the Lord’s Gospel announced that the payment for all sin (Judas’ and Cain’s included) was made once for all in the shedding of Christ’s blood (Hebrews 10:10). The blessings of the Promise given by means of the blood and water (John 19:34) flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Savior.

Indeed, it is Jesus’ Blood that speaks better things than that of Abel (Hebrews 12:24)—Jesus’ Blood cries out, not for vengeance, but for forgiveness. The proclamation is that everyone who believes in Jesus as Savior has what the Lord promises in the Gospel—forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life. Indeed, for Jesus’ sake, you are forgiven for all your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.