Your Offering Has A Living Component

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Genesis 4:7 (NKJV) - "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Have you ever critically examined why Cain's sacrifice was rejected? This is especially important because Hebrews 11:4 tells us Abel offered a "more excellent" sacrifice than Cain, implying that Cain's sacrifice was excellent, only that Abel's was more excellent. An appreciation of the new covenant presents an answer.

In the old covenant, you only needed to present animal sacrifices, sacrifices that get slaughtered on the altar. However, in the new covenant, you need to present living sacrifices. Rom 12:1 informs that this "living sacrifice" is you, your body. This means that under the current dispensation of grace, you present yourself first to God, and then you present your material offering. Jesus taught that when you come to present an offering to God at the altar and you remember someone has got a problem with you, drop your offering and first go back and reconcile with the individual (Matt 5:23-24).

Biblically, there are certain similarities between the period before the law of Moses (which Cain and Abel lived) and the new covenant. For instance, Cain's judgment after he killed Abel has markings of grace (please study for clarity). In other words, for the sacrifice to have been accepted by God, the living or human component of the sacrifice, which was Cain, needed to be accepted first.

Unfortunately, Cain was a sinner and because the living component of his sacrifice (himself) was rejected, his material sacrifice was also rejected. Hear what God said to him: "If you do well, will you not be accepted" (Gen 4:7). So, clearly himself and by extension his sacrifice, was rejected because he wasn't doing well. Unlike Abel, God had respect first for Abel, and then his sacrifice (Gen 4:4).

So, in conclusion, when you come to the altar to offer sacrifices to God, the living component of your sacrifice, which is yourself, needs to be accepted by God first before your material offering. So, there has to be focus on the acceptability of the human component as well as the material component of the sacrifice. For the human component to be accepted, it has to be holy, and this is only reasonable (Rom 12:1). God bless you

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