enemy fighting against God and His offspring. Self-sacrifice on the other hand,
being living sacrifices, is about living a life of obedience, holiness and faithfulness,
of our own choice, and a willingness to endure pain and hardship in order to
remain faithful and true to God. A willingness to accept whatever lot we must
endure for the sake of the Kingdom, like Abraham, Isaac and Jesus did.
Sacrifice is not pretty; it’s messy, bloody and fiery, but it is also deeply spiritual. If
there was no sin introduced to the human race, this depth of sacrifice would never
have been necessary. But sin did come into the world through Adam, and God
cannot co-exist with sin.
After God created Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, he warned him
in Genesis 2:16- 17 : ‘ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the
garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for in the day that you eat of it you^ shall surely die.”’
All God required of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was obedience to one
simple command – not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...
but man could not even honour that! And so because God can never lie, death was
introduced into the life of man, both physical and spiritual death. We see this
almost immediately when some years later, Cain, Adam’s first born, kills his own
brother. And so the first physical death to mankind was not even a natural one,
but a murder, demonstrating the new state of not just the mortality, but also the
sinfulness of man. Righteous Abel’s life was prematurely terminated by his sinful
brother.
To make it even more tragic, Abel died because his actions were pleasing to God
while Cain’s were not as we see in Genesis 4: 2- 8 : ‘... Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain
worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an
offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the
firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and
his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do
what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is
crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”