God has pronounced a sentence on Cain, be a restless wanderer who is unable to farm. Cain had taken a life that was not his to take, and God ends the life Cain has come to know. Cain was a farmer, a man connected to the land. He worked and toiled, and by the sweet of his brow the earth produced crops. His identity was wrapped up in the land and his connection to it. Now that has been stripped away. The identity that Cain has come to know and embrace has been stripped from him because he allowed sin to rule him.
Sin does that, it strips us of who we are and robs us of the life we are connected to. Had Cain mastered sin he could have stayed on his farm. He could have spent his life among the plants, turning a small part of it into a paradise, a small Eden amidst the wilderness. But Cain gave into anger which led to murder, and as a result the life he had known was over. He allowed sin to rule him and sin defined him.
God did not end Cain's life, but set him to wander the earth, but He didn't leave him without an identity. God gave His protection to Cain, appointing a sign, an identity, to him to guard his life. God is the source of identity.
Cain's identity was that of a farmer, and I imagine that God's rejection of his offering came as a blow to that human identity. Everything he had worked so hard for, everything he had invested himself into, all of it amounted to nothing. After that he killed his brother, and as a result the only identity he had known was taken from him. Now Cain has the chance to embrace a new identity, one bestowed on him by God, and had he embraced this, maybe we would remember him for something more than as the first murderer.
God is the source of true identity, and if we embrace what He offers we won't be remembered for the sins we commit.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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