21 September 2025; Genesis 4:3-5, Romans 5:6-8 “Who Cares About Loving God?”

I.

    In Church we talk about the love of God.  We speak of two kinds. One is God’s love for us. The other is our love for God. When we consider our daily lives, which of these two do we pursue?  I know I pursue the love of God for me.  I’m not sure I’m really trying to love God.

    I met my wife while I was attending theological seminary. When we started talking about marriage, she once asked me, “Who’s more important, God or me?” I was at a loss for words. All through seminary, they were constantly telling us to “put God first.”

    I knew the right answer, of course. The person who puts God first and loves God can truly love their neighbor. That’s what you write on a test to get a good grade. But when I was faced with that choice in real life, I was confused. The truth is, I no longer understand how much loving God means to me and to Him.

    God is invisible. I believe that the standard answer in the seminary is true. So, I make an effort to put the invisible God first and to love God.

    But here’s the thing: New Testament apostles met the resurrected Christ in person, but we only hear about it. Even if we try our best to love an invisible God, we don’t know if it’s really love. When we start to wonder if it’s just our own imagination, it starts to feel a bit questionable.

    It’s not just the apostles, though. Cain from Genesis also interacted with God directly. Cain is made out to be the bad guy who killed his brother, but…he was so desperate for God’s approval that he became jealous and killed his brother. That’s how important his relationship with God was to him.

II．

    Cain was a farmer, and his brother Abel was a shepherd. Cain brought some of his crops as an offering to God. His brother Abel brought some of his sheep as an offering. Then, in verses 4 and 5, God was pleased with his brother’s sheep but didn’t even look at Cain’s offering. He’d gone to all that trouble for God, but it wasn’t enough.

    A good comparison might be this: Your dad lost a bunch of money on a stock market investment and was feeling down. So, for his birthday, you secretly made a killing on a different investment and prepared the cash as a surprise gift. Meanwhile, your brother announced his engagement to his long-time girlfriend on your dad’s birthday.

    Your dad was absolutely thrilled about the engagement, but when it came to your gift, he not only wasn’t happy, he rejected it, saying, “I can’t accept money.” That’s kind of what it felt like for Cain. He was furious. John Steinbeck’s interpretation in “East of Eden” is that he was furious “because he treasured his father so much.”

    While some churches interpreted it as Cain offering a cheap, half-hearted gift, the result was the same. Cain became so enraged that he killed his brother Abel. He did it because he desperately wanted to be noticed by his father.

    So what about us? If we felt that God loved our brother more, would we feel enough jealousy to kill him? If you kill your brother, you will also suffer a loss. We would never pay that kind of price just to get God’s attention.

    In that sense, Cain’s desire to be loved by God was much stronger than ours. God is invisible to us. That’s why it’s hard for us to grasp the idea of loving or being loved by God.

    That’s why the Bible says, “There is no one who seeks God,” and “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.” This is from Romans chapter 3: “all have turned away and have become worthless; there is no one who understands.”

III.

    In fact, we want to be loved by God more than we want to love Him, because if God loves us, we have nothing to worry about.

    Even for people who don’t believe in God, the moment of death can bring anxiety. If there’s no God and no eternal life, then the life we’ve lived will amount to nothing. It’s an empty, hopeless, and  desapare. If we could just know that God loves us at the end, it would bring peace.

    That’s why people of faith try so hard to be loved by God. The Pharisees, who didn’t know Christ, tried to follow every rule because they wanted to be liked by God.

    In contrast, Christianity teaches that we are “justified by faith, apart from works.” So instead of trying to follow every rule, we try to earn God’s favor by believing hard.

    But this is structurally the same as the Pharisees. We’re just swapping one “work”—following rules—for another: the “work” of faith. But salvation isn’t achieved through any human action.

    The Bible says, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. In this, God shows his love for us.” We are already saved.

    Before we ever thought about following rules or believing, God had already loved us. The “faith” that saves us isn’t an effort to be loved by God. Faith is knowing that we are already loved and finding peace.

IV.

    Cain made a mistake. He desperately wanted God’s attention. That’s why he killed Abel. Then God asks, “Where is Abel?” It’s like God only cares about Abel. That’s why in verse 9, Cain replies, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

    This sounds exactly like a conversation between a parent and a rebellious teenager. He wants to be acknowledged. His plea, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is really his way of crying out, “Why aren’t you paying attention to me?” This Cain is as cool as James Dean in “East of Eden” and in “Rebel Without a Cause”.

    But what happens next? When God tells him, “What have you done?” and “I’m banishing you from the Garden of Eden,” Cain suddenly becomes uncool. When a parent says, “I’m going to kick you out,” the cool response is “Fine, I’ll leave!”

    But Cain immediately becomes servile. He looks to God for a favor, saying, “My punishment is more than I can bear.” It’s so lame. He becomes just like those people who try to get on God’s good side by following rules or acting out their faith.

    Living in fear of God’s approval is not faith. A true person of faith, a Christian, is supposed to be cool. They are cool because they live freely, secure in the knowledge that they are loved by God.

    Faith isn’t an effort to be loved by God. Faith is finding peace in knowing that you are already loved by God. Cain had faith when he committed the crime. As long as he felt loved by God, he could stand his ground and argue with God on equal terms.

    People can live freely and openly when they feel secure in being loved. We can be our true selves in relationships when we are sure of being loved. If you are truly loved by a person, you might not even need God in your daily life. When asked, “Who’s more important, God or me?” you might even say your significant other is.

    But human love is uncertain, and it only exists in this world. The peace we seek from human love can be shattered by a change of heart, and we are left with despair when we leave this world. That is why we need to be loved by God.

    We need love, but we don’t have to earn it. We are already loved. So we should find peace in that… But here’s the problem: God is invisible. So we end up living a miserable, unfree life, constantly looking for God’s approval.

V.

    This brings us to the final problem, the one we started with: the issue of not knowing God’s love because He’s invisible. But is it really true that we can’t know God’s love at all?

    God is a being beyond human comprehension. If we could fully understand God, He would be less than human. And that wouldn’t be God. It’s only natural that we can’t understand the true God 100%.

    But are we, who have been led by the Holy Spirit into faith, completely unable to understand God? Today, we are here, standing in His presence. Even if we can’t understand God’s guidance 100%, it’s certainly not 0%.

    Looking back on my own life, even that question, “Who’s more important, God or me?” and my confusion, was just within the context of God’s love. Whether you’re the person asking out of anxiety for the future or the one confused by the question, you are grappling with this question within a relationship with a God who is important to you.

    Faith is about knowing God’s love and finding peace. But we can’t get to know God through our own power alone. We won’t be saved by our own zeal. We can’t know God by our own strength.

    Yet, we feel it somewhere inside us. And when we think about that, we can expect that God will show us more of His love and grace before we die so we can go in peace. That’s what faith is.

    Giving up because we think we can’t understand is what Cain did, leading him to kill his brother. Thinking that God doesn’t love us is what turned Cain into that uncool person we saw later. Faith is trusting in God and continuing to have that expectation that He will show us His grace.

    Since God has loved us so much throughout our lives, we can trust that He’ll help us understand it a little more before we die, so we can pass on in peace. And when we put our hope in that, we are reminded once again that we were already loved all along.

    Trying hard to be loved is a mistake. Instead, if you’re going to try hard at something, try hard to notice that you are already loved. Try hard to be sensitive to God’s love for you.

    Even at the times we feel like God’s love doesn’t matter, we are still loved. Faith is the expectation that God will help our understanding more and give us more peace and love.