Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
~ Genesis 4:6-7

After the Fall, Genesis gives us the first summary of God’s moral law when Cain and Abel bring God offerings, and God favors Abel’s over Cain’s.  Cain, hurt at God’s diminishment of his gift, becomes angry and “downcast”.  God meets him, and has a talk with him.  In short, God says to Cain, “Hey man- just do what is right.  You know what that is.”  Here is a strong argument that the human heart is wired from birth with a recognition of what is right and what is wrong. God told Cain to simply do what is right.  I suspect that Adam and Eve and the early crew were hard-wired to live in love, and to do what was right, before Satan tricked them and they were expelled from the Garden and sin cut into every human heart, marring its ability to live in love (that is, to live in Love Himself).

How easy it is to complicate moral questions and to blur options in ethical dilemmas when there are some basic choices we have in every decision- to do right or to do wrong.  Unfortunately, because we humans couldn’t grasp and heed the simple guidance of love back in the day, God had to throw the law in front of us, to show us how far off, how impaired we had become in being able to make each choice in love, or, to “do the right thing.”

Fortunately, He has given us His Spirit, who guides us while He works in us, counseling us to love. Life for the believer is not about fulfilling the law- God already fulfilled His requirement that we be blameless keepers of the law by sending Jesus to keep it for us.  But more significantly, Jesus also came to remake our hearts, to rehabilitate our ability to love.  God just wants us, like He wanted Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, to walk with Him and to live in and from His love in a dynamic friendship where He leads and we follow Him.

Struggling with sin?  Decide God and His goodness are more important to you than whatever idol is dragging you around, and then ask Him to help you “do what is right.”  Repeatedly.  Deliverance comes when He becomes more important to us than whatever brackish well we keep going back to for polluted pleasure. Deliverance is a product of living in love, for love- living in Him, and for Him.  Our sickened selves heal when He is the anchor and object of our lives.

Lord, help me be mindful to just do what I know is right in my life.  Help me to listen to your guidance and just be faithful to go, do, and be what you want me to.  Help me to be less about laws and more about loving, which I know is what You mean when You say “do what is right.”