The First Pharisee

Knowing now that Cain's offering was not made by faith (in other words, not made according to God's desires but according to Cain's own desires, or his own idea of what "doing well" meant to God), we see then that Cain became the first example of the ideology that was demonstrated during the time of Jesus by a Jewish group known as the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were the most important religious/political group amongst the Jews in existence at the time of and prior to Christ's ministry. They appear in the gospels many times and always in opposition to Jesus. The apostle Paul was himself a Pharisee (formerly known by the name of Saul) before becoming a Christian; as a Pharisee he saw his self-appointed task of persecuting and killing Christians as his work of righteousness unto God. When Paul later met Jesus on the road to Damascus, the words spoken to Him by the Lord were: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute ME?" (Acts 9:4) for certainly, as he persecuted the body of Christ known as the church, Paul was, in fact, persecuting Christ Himself.

The name "Pharisee" means "the separated ones," a distinction established by the will of man; which is interesting since the word "church" means "the called out ones," a distinction established solely by the will of God.

Thus the stark contrast between the Pharisees and the church is set at the very foundation of each: for the true church is "called out" in accordance to the guidance and direction of Jesus Christ who is the head of the church; and the true body of Christ (aka the church) walks in humility, not in pride, knowing that they have no righteousness of their own, but are simply covered by the righteousness provided to them through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. This is known as "being saved by faith through grace;" grace being the gift of God through Jesus Christ. While many of today's Christians look, sadly, more like Pharisees than true followers of Christ, there is still a remnant that do indeed have grateful hearts towards God, and who walk in simple humility as Jesus did.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were highly "spiritual" (at least in their own eyes, if not God's eyes) and considered themselves to be separate from (and superior to) others who were not Pharisees; they considered their righteousness before God to be marvelous indeed, simply because of the position they believed they earned through the law. They had no heart of gratitude or love towards God; they did the works of the law for their own benefit of getting into heaven (or so they thought), and thus had little or no love for their fellow man along the way; thereby totally missing the point of the law; for Jesus said the whole law could be summed up with these two commandments alone:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." (Luke 10:27) Unfortunately, love (either for God or neighbor) was not really the primary focus of the ultra-legalistic Pharisees.

"This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips: but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me….for out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." (Matthew 15:8-9, 19)

Jesus called the Pharisees "white-washed sepulchres" (Matthew 23:27): tombs containing death and decay on the inside but appearing to be pristinely beautiful on the outside (because they gave the appearance of being holy, when their hearts were rotten and full of evil.) Thus the righteousness of the Pharisees was "salvation by works according to the law" (man-made) rather than "by faith through grace" (God-made). Put in a more simple form, it was "law versus grace." This is what caused the Pharisees to be in constant opposition to Jesus (to the point of wanting him murdered) who was full of the GRACE of God:

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

Thus, we can say that Cain was the first "Pharisee" of sorts. The Bible tells us his offering was made unto God in a way that was unacceptable to God because it was not according to God's desires for the method of offerings to God. It was not an offering made from a man who knew he was a sinner, yet seeking God with a humble heart. It was an offering made from a self-righteous man (a Pharisee) who thought that his offering should be accepted over his brother's for no other reason, apparently, but that his pride told him it should be so; perhaps he felt that because of his legal position as first-born or perhaps he was just deceived "by the wicked one." Actually, in either case he certainly was deceived, and not dealing with reality.
Whatever his thinking, it was similar to the Pharisees in the feeling of self-righteousness and superiority over others, and murder was spawned in his heart, as it was also in the hearts of the Pharisees.

To understand Cain and Abel's situation better, we ought to understand why an offering was being given in the first place, which we will get into further in our next posting.

I will tell you this: it all began with the fig leaves that Adam and Eve fashioned for themselves back in Genesis 3:7. God provided a far better covering for them that He fashioned with His own hands, and I believe He taught the first parents by that one action what an offering was to be. And I believe we can safely assume that they taught this to their children; but one of their children, at least, chose to be rebellious and do things his own way, rather than God's way.

To be continued in tomorrow's posting.