What is mankind?

Let’s review the biblical theme of brother-keeping as  developed so far: If Cain had been a proper brother-keeper , things would have been so different. The first recorded sin after the Fall was a murder, an attack on the image of God. And it was not just murder, but fratricide. If there’s a hierarchy of egregiousness, the killing of a brother by a brother must be right up there. Think of it: the only people available for Cain to murder were immediate family members, and kinship was not enough to stop him in his tracks. Israel was a nation of brothers . God’s law stipulated that people with no brothers (foreigners, widows, orphans) should be protected and cared for, as though the nation were their brothers .    Jesus reinforced the concept in the account of Lazarus and the rich man  and His parable of the good Samaritan . It’s against this backdrop that members of Christ’s church are written of as being brothers and sisters.  But before we get into that, it’s im...