Morning By Morning #287

Godly sorrow brings repentance.

2 Corinthians 7:10

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Genuine spiritual mourning over sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too high quality a flower to grow naturally in nature’s garden. Pearls form naturally in oysters, but repentance is never found in sinners unless God’s divine grace has worked it into them. If you have even a hint of a real hatred of sin, the Lord must have given it to you, for human nature’s thorns have never produced as much as a single fig. “Flesh gives birth to flesh” (John 3:6).

True repentance has a distinct tie to our Savior. When we truly repent of sin, we will have one eye on sin and another on the cross, or, better still, we will fix both eyes on Christ and see our transgressions only through the light of His love.

True sorrow over sin is very practical, for no one can truly hate sin while living in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely in theory but experientially, as a child who has been burned now fears fire. We should be just as afraid of sin as someone who recently has been robbed is afraid of thieves. And we should shun it—shun it in everything—not only in big things but also in little things, just as people shun small vipers as well as huge snakes. True mourning over sin will also make us very careful over our tongue, lest we say even one wrong word. It will make us watchful over our daily actions, lest we sin in anything, and will lead us to close each day with the painful confessions of our shortcomings. Then it will lead us to open each day with diligent prayers, asking the Lord to uphold us that we may not sin against Him today.

Sincere repentance is also continuous, for believers will repent until their dying day. It is a continual flowing stream. Every other sorrow fades over time, but sorrow over sin grows as we mature. Thus, it is a bittersweet blessing, but one for which we should thank God, that He has permitted us to enjoy and to suffer repentance until we enter our eternal rest.

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

The complete verse from which our text is derived today is as follows: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” As this passage indicates, there is a vast difference between “godly sorrow” and “worldly sorrow.”

More often than not, what we see in today’s society is worldly sorrow, which is simply being sorry for getting caught. It is not true sorrow over having committed the sin in the first place, but sorrow for having to suffer the consequences of sinful actions. And one of these consequences is having the ongoing burden of living with guilt and regrets. Yet with godly sorrow, which “brings repentance,” there is no lingering guilt. The most important difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow, however, is the end result: the former “leads to salvation,” or life, while the latter “brings death.”

Paul taught Timothy that repentance is a gift of God. May our prayer today for the lost include his words to the young pastor:

Lord, we pray for the lost that You would “grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:25 – 26).