Something worth noting as well in this chapter is that Cain was given a choice. It’s clear by the way that God spoke to him that the LORD clearly meant that Cain could choose to do what was right or could continue down the path of sin.

This is an important clarification because we often suppress the truth of choice. Sometimes we have the mindset that we are too dominated by “that’s just how I am, can’t help it”, or we might take victimization in a way that minimizes our own choices in life. Additionally, it is very common theology in the church that a person is just so “lost” to sin that they are incapable of choice (called total depravity). Again, it is easy to miss how this sort of thinking is actually bubbling up from our own sinfulness, much the same as a person desiring to not be held accountable for their choices by hiding behind some shield of victimhood. Yet a very simple truth we see here is how choice was offered to Cain.

We may struggle to understand this within the great web of our own understanding of God’s Word and our theology, but we must be careful to not suppress such truths. The desire to deny accountability for the choices we make only comes from sin in us. And we can be just as sinful and twisted as any “worldly” person if we seek to deny accountability for our choices in using some idea of doctrine, just as any person in the world would use “personality” or victimhood as a shield. It’s very important that we see just how sinful a heart this is, and how worldly it is!

The work of God in us is never to get us to deny mankind’s accountability for our choices, but to get us to see all the choices we make. It is very common that we do not really see the choices we are making because we are on such “autopilot” with our desires. Yet God labors to show us just how much of our lives are rooted in our own choices. Not the cruel judgments people often make against those poor and in need in the world—as if they could just magically make their situations different with enough effort—how ironic that the people who often deny their accountability the most are also those who make such cruel oversimplifications of others… But for all of us, the Lord labors to show us that we are all sowing many things in our lives. Everything we choose, think on, pursue, say, and act upon are things being sown into our lives and the world around us, for better or worse.

One of the greatest characteristics of sin is seen in any effort we make to put off our own accountability for the choices we make, or are called to make. We hate the way God makes us responsible to choose what is good, and to hold us accountable for any place where we don’t.

One clarification: What is sad is that accountability is often put in the wrong place! People are often pressured to take accountability in the very areas they aren’t actually accountable for. For example, in an abusive or toxic situation, pressuring the person harmed by another to take some kind of “responsibility” in the situation, when there’s no accountability for them to take—this only puts on them the responsibility of the other person. But rather, the issue is where we do not bear our responsibility in the areas that are truly ours (outside of such situations).