>>511060361
Abel is a believer, because he offers a blood atonement understanding the sacrificial system rules before the mosaic law is even implemented several thousand years later.
Cain is trusting what he does himself to be acceptable to God with no shed blood. The context is a sacrifice and God cursed the ground and man with having to work. The context is now further narrowed down to Cain trying to justify himself by evading the curse and using his own efforts rather than shed blood to atone for what he’s done. This is infact vain religious nature. Going to church frivolously, all this legalistic (I did x, you have to save me now!) bullshit.
When you look at Matthew 7:20 (as Matthew and Luke are snippets of Jesus nonstop shitting on priests) Jesus foretells he’s going to send people away at the Gate because they cite their own righteousness by the law rather than trust what Jesus did to save them.
‘Lord lord, did we not?’
(They’re boasting in what they did, they’re religious apostates they never believed the gospel, because Jesus says ‘NEVER knew you’ it’s obvious he’s not being hyperbolic, they never trusted him to save them. They thought the law and following it was how they were saved, they were trusting themselves.
‘Depart from me, I never knew you.’
This verse in of itself read in context is immediately followed by a lesson where Jesus tells you to make sure you’re building on his foundation, which is what he did at the cross. It has fuck all to do with what you and I do when it comes to being justified, if you can’t trust him completely to save you, literally anything you did for your entire life God is simply going to point out to you, that you did it to glorify yourself.
By their own words they’re clearly trusting in themselves. Working iniquity is just breaking the law, which they’re going to do with or without believing the gospel. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sin.