Sin Lieth at the Door

When Cain made his offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord, the Lord did not accept it because it was not the kind of offering that He had asked for.  Adam had been told that they “should offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord,” which he did (Moses 5:5).  Cain’s offering was motivated by Satan and was not what the Lord had asked for, and so it was not accepted.  Cain “was very wroth” because of this.  The Lord said to him, “Why art thou wroth? Why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted.  And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and Satan desireth to have thee” (Moses 5:23).  This phrase that “sin lieth at the door” is an intriguing one to me, and the only other place it appears in scripture is in the analogous account in Genesis.  What exactly did the Lord mean by this?

I think there are a few different ways that we can understand this phrase that “sin lieth at the door.”  First, I think we can view it as a warning to Cain.  We are often told that if we listen to the Spirit the Lord will not let us make a major, serious mistake.  Cain had done wrong in not sacrificing as the Lord commanded him, but he was about to commit a very serious sin that would have everlasting consequences.  Something being “at the door” means that it is close at hand, and so the Lord seemed to have been alerting him to the fact that he was about to commit a terrible crime.  He could stop it if he simply would “do well,” but he would not do well then great sins awaited him.  The Lord likewise will warn us as we start to make mistakes that could spiral into very grievous transgressions, but like with Cain, He won’t prevent it from happening if we refuse to choose right.  Another implication of the phrase perhaps is that great sins are generally done in secret; something lying on the ground at the door implies that the thing is not out in the open but hidden and ready to entrap us.  The Lord in contrast tells us, “I stand at the door, and knock” (Revelation 3:20).  He is in full view because He has nothing to hide.  But the works of the evil one are most often hidden acts, just as the one that Cain was about to commit.  When Satan tempted Cain he said, “Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die.”  We read that “all these things were done in secret” as they plotted the death of Abel (Moses 5:29-30).  Sin generally seeks to be secretive, lying and lurking because of shame, but acts of righteousness need no covering or hiding place.      

We might also learn something else from the phrase if we consider the other meaning of the word “lieth”.  Could the Lord have also meant it in the sense of being untruthful as well—in other words, that sin would be there waiting to tell him falsehoods?  Satan, the personification of sin, is always ready to lie to us in any way possible in order to get us to break God’s commandments.  And this is exactly what happened to Cain.  Satan led him to believe that the secret would be well kept, so much so that Cain declared “Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret” (Moses 5:31).  That’s what he thought, but there are surely few “secrets” better well known throughout the ages and across at least the Christian world as the fact that Cain slew Abel.  We all know it even thousands of years later.  Sin will “lie” to us in the sense that it almost always mislead us about the consequences of our transgression.  Those who seek to live righteously must be ever vigilant, for “sin lieth at the door” in more than one way.  As the Savior commanded, we “watch and pray always” (3 Nephi 18:15).