Cain displayed a shameful tone of presumptuous impudence in his insulting reply to the Lord God. If it had not been on record in the page of inspiration, we might almost have doubted whether a man could speak so impudently when actually conscious that God himself was addressing him. Men blaspheme often in a most terrible fashion, but it is usually because they forget God, and ignore his presence; but Cain was conscious that God was speaking to him. He heard him say, “Where is your brother Abel?” and yet he dared, with the coldest impertinence, to reply to God, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” As much as to say— “Do you think that I have to keep watch over him as he watches over his sheep? Am I also a shepherd as he was, and am I to take as much care of him as he did of a crippled lamb?”
It is to be noted that MAN IS NOT HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER IN SOME SENSES.
There is some little truth in what Cain says. Generally some amount of truth clings to every lie; and even in the greatest possible profanity there is, usually, something or other of truth, though it is dangerously twisted and distorted. In this atrocious question of Cain there is some little measure of reason. In some senses no man is his brother’s keeper.
For instance, first, every man and woman must bear their own responsibility for their own acts before Almighty God.
It is not possible for a man or woman to shift from their own shoulders to those of another their obligations to the Most High. Obedience to the law of God must be personally rendered, or a person becomes guilty. No matter how holy their father was, or how righteous their mother was, they themselves will have to stand on their own feet and answer for themselves before the judgment-seat of God. Each person who hears the gospel is responsible for understanding it. No one else can believe the gospel for them, or repent for them, or be born again for them, or become a Christian for them. They must personally repent of sin, personally believe in Jesus Christ, personally be converted, and personally live to the service and glory of God.
Each man and woman must seek the Lord themselves—each one must lay their load of sin at the foot of the cross, and personally accept a personal Savior for themselves. You cannot do with the matters of your soul as you do with the business of your estate, and employ a priest in the same way as you engage a lawyer to represent you. There is only one substitute and advocate who can plead for us, thus no earthly sponsor can plead with heaven for us. God demands the heart, and with the heart men and women must believe unto righteousness, and with their own heart, too, for no one can take their place. Personal service is required by the great King, and must be rendered on pain of eternal damnation. No one can be his brother’s keeper in the sense of taking upon himself another man’s responsibilities.
Now, secondly, IN AN IMPORTANT SENSE WE ARE, EACH ONE OF US, OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER.
We ought to regard ourselves in that light, and it is a Cainish spirit which prompts us to think otherwise and to wrap ourselves up in hardheartedness and say, “It is no concern of mine how others fare. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Let us be far from that spirit.
For, first, common feelings of humanity should lead every Christian to feel an interest in the soul of every unsaved person.
I say, “common humanity,” for we use the word “humanity” to signify kindness. I trust among us the expression may be used that “common humanity” leads us to desire the salvation of others. I am sure, my dear friends, if you saw a man dying for lack of bread that you would wish to share your crust with him. Will you let souls perish for lack of the bread of life without pitying and helping them? If we saw a poor unfortunate person shivering in the winter’s cold we would be ready to divide our clothing that we might clothe him. Shall we see sinners without the robe of righteousness and not be anxious to speak to them of him who can clothe them in pure white linen? When a person’s life is in jeopardy because of an accident, we rush them anywhere and use every means available that we may rescue them; and yet this life is trivial compared with life eternal, and for us to be indifferent when men and women are perishing—indifferent to the dreadful anguish and torments which come upon unrepentant sinners throughout eternity, is to act as if all brotherly compassion had fled from our hearts.
Christians, I charge you, even with so low a motive as this, because you are men and women, and unbelieving men and women are your brothers and sisters, born of the same stock, and living beneath the canopy of the one eternal Father, therefore care for the souls of others and be, each one of you, his brother’s and sister’s keeper.
A second argument is drawn from the fact that all of us, especially those of us who are Christians, have the power to do good to others.
None of us have the same abilities, for none of us have the same gifts, or the same position, but like the little girl, a captive from Israel, that served Naaman’s wife, who had opportunity to tell of the prophet who could heal her master, therefore every young Christian here has some power to do good to others. We all have some capacity for doing good.
Now, take it as a truism that power to do good involves the duty of doing good. Wherever you are placed, if you can bless a person, you are obligated to do so. To have the power and not to use it is a sin. If you withhold your hand from that which you are able to do for the good of your fellowman then you have broken the law of love.
All your knowledge, all your experience, all that you possess that grace has given you, demands a return in the form of service rendered to others.
The Jews were God’s elect nation—elect to keep the revelations of God for all the nations; but they failed because they never cared about sharing those great truths with the Gentiles, but believed that they had received them for their own special benefit. The selfish spirit so grew on them that when God’s grace to the heathen was mentioned it made them angry with rage. And, you saved ones, you owe much to God, but do not think that you are saved for your own special benefit alone. It is a great benefit to you, but grace is bestowed on you like light, that you may give it to others who are in darkness; bestowed on you as the bread that was given by our Lord to his disciples, that they might share it among the multitude, that all might eat and be filled.
Think of this—that the power to do good involves the responsibility to do it wherever that power exists; and so, as far as you have any ability, you are by that very fact constituted as your brother’s keeper.
Another argument is very plainly drawn from our Lord’s version of the moral law. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now since we have loved ourselves so much that through God’s grace we have sought and found forgiveness of our sin, should we not love our neighbor so much as to desire for them to know their sin and to seek forgiveness too? It was right of us to secure our highest interests by laying hold of eternal life; but if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, should we give ourselves any rest while multitudes are despising Christ and refusing salvation? No, my brothers and sisters, we have never come up to the standard yet; but in proportion as we do begin to love our neighbor as ourselves we shall certainly feel that God has made us in a measure to be our brother’s keeper.
A loveless religion is good for nothing. He who does not love his fellowman enough to desire their salvation, and aim at it with all his might, gives no proof that he loves God at all.
To the Christian perhaps the most forcible reason will be that the whole example of Jesus Christ, whom we call Master and Lord, lies in the direction of our being the keeper of our brother; for what was Jesus’ life but one of complete unselfishness?
What was said of Jesus at his death but that “he saved others: but he could not save himself”? The very fact that there is a Christ at all means that there was one who cared for others, and that our Lord became a man, means that he loved his enemies and came here to rescue those who rebelled against his authority. If we are selfish—if we make our own eternal life to be the one end of life, we are not Christians. We may call whom we please Master, but we are not following Jesus Christ.
Oh, though we gave our bodies to be burned, yet if we have no love for mankind it would profit us nothing. We may go a long way, and apparently all the way, in the externals of the Christian religion, but if the heart is never warm with a desire to benefit mankind, we are still aliens to the commonwealth of which Jesus is the great head. I am sure it is so. I do not speak my own mind, but the mind of Christ. If he were here what would he say to any one who called himself his disciple and yet never lifted his hand or moved his tongue to snatch the firebrand from the flame or save the sinner from the error of his ways?
It must be so, then: we must be our brothers’ keepers. Let the thought next rise in our minds that we are certainly ordained to the office of brother-keeper because we shall be called to account about it.
But, beloved, we must never end there, because brotherhood extends to all ranks, races, and conditions; ….Christians ought to love the erring and the sinful, and if we do not we shall be called to account for it.
If we have an opportunity of doing good, even to the vilest, and do not use it, we shall not be guiltless. Some of you who get rich in city then move out into the suburbs, and I cannot blame you. Why shouldn’t you? But if you leave the heart of the city, where the working people are, without any means of grace—if you are content to hear the gospel yourselves and withdraw your wealth from struggling among the poor, God will one day say to you, “Where is your brother Abel?”
City merchant, where are the poor men that enabled you to become wealthy? Where are they, who after all were the bone and sinew that made you rich, from whom you fled as though they were struck with the plague, and whom you left to die in utter ignorance? Oh, see to this, you rich men, you persons in responsible positions, lest the blood of the poor be demanded of your souls at the great day of accounting.
One thing more upon this calling to account;
The more needy, the more destitute people are, the greater is their claim upon us. For according to the account book—need I turn to the chapter? I think you remember it—they are the persons for whom we shall have mainly to give an account:
“I was an hungry, and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me; naked, and you did not clothed me.”
These objects of charity were the most destitute and poor of all, and the great question at the last day is about what was done for them.
Such mercy as you show, such mercy shall you have.
(excerpts from Am I My Brother’s Keeper? by C. H. SPURGEON)
