God’s Abel & the Devil’s Cain | 1 John 3:10-12

Lord's Day: March 23, 2025  Preacher: Carlos Montijo  Series: First John  Topic: Of Man  Scripture: 1 John 3:10–15, Matthew 3:7–8, Titus 2:11–15, Proverbs 28:18, Genesis 4:1–11, Proverbs 3:9–12, Hebrews 9:22, Hebrews 11:4, James 1:13–15, 1 Corinthians 10:5–13

I.  Previously, we left off with John the apostle expounding for us the black and white, good and evil, light and darkness, God and devil, Cain and Abel contrasts

¹⁰ By this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested: everyone who does not do righteousness is not of God, as well as the one who does not love his brother. ¹¹ For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; ¹² not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. 1 John 3:10–12

II. And love, true love—God’s love—is righteous because it is defined and conditioned by the Law and Logos of God

• Contrary to popular belief, God’s love is discriminating, selective, and exclusive
• God’s love always brings regeneration, and repentance, and sanctification, and all of Christ’s benefits

III. God’s love and saving grace condition us and conform us to the image of His Son, and away from sin, from our fallen, wretched old man, away from the flesh (Rom 8:29)

• Love, and Righteousness, and Law, and Truth, and God and His glory—all go hand in hand
• Do not let the world, the flesh, the devil, or misguided, misled, or false Christians define what love is for you, or anything else for that matter
• God has given us His Spirit and His saving grace and sanctifying means of grace and of deliverance to both deal with our sin now, after we are saved, and “do righteousness” (practice/live, believe, speak, behave), beginning with the law and the gospel

IV. The following verses give us examples of a child of God and of the Devil, as object lessons

• Object lessons in the Bible are objects that teach us valuable, important lessons
• The objects in this case are the lives of Cain and Abel, illustrate for us what we should do (“live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age”) and not do (i.e., “denying ungodliness and worldly desires”), that we should not go the way of Cain, evil, the devil, but instead we follow Abel’s example of faith and godliness

V.  What actually happened between Cain and Abel? Why were Cain’s deeds evil and Abel’s righteous?

• Sin is personified here as insidious, gradual (subtle, seeks to entrap/ensnare us, deceitful), as restless, and constantly desiring to overpower/dominate us, even if it’s inch by inch
• Look at Cain’s sin progression, which reveals his walk
• “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain" (Heb. 11:4)

VI. 1 John 3:12 points out Cain’s motive for murder—blind, baseless jealousy, “because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous”

• The problem is revealed in the entire pattern, the peripateo of Cain’s life, his walk, his disposition, his lifestyle of sin, beginning with his lack of faith, he was a hater and murderer rather than a lover and repenter (penitent)

VII. It didn’t start with murdering his brother in cold blood, it was a gradual progression

• Murdering Abel was the fruit sin of Cain’s root sin
• Beware: None of us are that far removed from Cain, as hideous and wicked a sinner as he was, because the apostle John later on confronts us with the reality that “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know [no excuse] that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” 1 John 3:15

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com