If … Then

If … Then

The Bible is written in words, and those words comprise the Word of God. The Spirit of God superintended over men to write, using words, that which God wanted written. The writings bore the style of the writers, using their vocabulary and grammar, and yet they wrote exactly what God wanted. We call this the inspiration of Scripture. No other set of writings is so inspired.

In our daily emails, we have been studying patterns of words and phrases in the Bible: all the “but’s” of the Bible; things sinners say; most recently, references to pride. I have looked at all the promises of the Bible, and will likely sample the “do not’s” of the Bible in future daily emails. But right now, I’m working on “if … then” statements.

“If … then” statements are conditional statements rather than absolute. Oh, there is an absoluteness to them, but it is conditional on the action you or another party take. The very first “If … then” statement in the Bible is in Genesis 4, and it is God speaking to an angry Cain, who even at this moment may be contemplating the murder of his brother Abel. God says to him, “If you do well, will (you) not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:7 NAS95) You will notice that there is no printed “then” in the text. It is understood. We do the same thing in our contemporary speech.

I take “doing well” or “not doing well” to refer to how one approaches God. Abel approached God with an acceptable offering, with a sacrificed lamb, foreshadowing our approach to God through the sacrifice of Christ. Cain had approached God with goods from the garden, things which quickly rot. He had not done well, but it appears that he still could do so. But if not, then sin is lying (better than “crouching”) at the door. It is lying in wait. It is seeking to gain the upper hand. God says, “you must master it.” But, can you?

The stakes are high. If you do well, your will be raised up. I take that to mean an offering that admits the need for atonement that will result in forgiveness and favor. If you do not … well, that is another story, and a sad one at that. “You must master it.” But can we master sin?

The account of much of world history is that men and women have more often been mastered by sin rather than they themselves mastering it. For many, life is comprised of a difficult dance with sin, seeking to blunt its attacks and mitigate its influence. We seek to hide it and keep it secret. We end up being deceptive about sin, and thus deceive even our own selves. We find that as we seek to manage sin, it manages us. We excuse and rationalize and blame. But managing sin and mastering sin are two very different things. And with sin at the door, we have to be on our game all the time.

I am glad that in the face of our failure to master sin, God has followed the “if … then” with a “so then.” In light of our inability and unwillingness to defeat the sin that is at the door, both inside and out, God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin. That is, Jesus is the One who came and lived the one sinless life that has ever been lived on this planet, and then died the only satisfactory, sacrificial and substitutionary death in our behalf. He mastered sin when we could not. He mastered sin for us. He mastered sin for those who will recognize Jesus as their Master.

I do not have the last word on this, thank the Lord, but it appears Cain never found or accepted his or God’s mastery of sin. He went his own way, did his own thing, and died his own death. He died with his sin, and away from God. He could have done better, by following Abel; by following Christ.