WWUTT 1687 Godly Sorrow Produces Repentance (2 Corinthians 7:8-12)

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When we have sinned, we must feel a godly sorrow over that sin, or else we might just turn right back to it again.

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See, there is a godly sorrow that leads to repentance, but a worldly sorrow that leads to death, when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in 2 Corinthians chapter 7.

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If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, I'm going to begin reading in verse 6 and go through verse 12.

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This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible. The Word of the Lord, through the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth.

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But God, who comforts the humbled, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you, as he reported to us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more.

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For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while.

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I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to repentance.

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For you were made to have godly sorrow, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

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For godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.

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But the sorrow of the world brings about death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has brought about in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong.

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In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter. So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the offender, nor for the sake of the one offended, but that your earnestness on our behalf might be manifested to you in the sight of God.

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So once again, remember there was this tearful letter that Paul had written, and we refer to this as letter

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C. It's kind of hard to talk about all the letters that Paul wrote to the

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Corinthians in just using the numbers that we have in canon.

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So we've got 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, but there were at least two other letters. In Paul's first letter to the

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Corinthians, he referenced a previous letter. So in 1 Corinthians he references a previous letter.

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We call that letter A. And then 1 Corinthians is letter B. The next letter, a sorrowful tearful letter that is referenced here, we refer to that as letter

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C. And then 2 Corinthians is letter D. To help alleviate confusion,

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I'm going to refer to letter C as the tearful letter. And that's pretty common. There are scholars when they refer to these different letters that Paul wrote to the

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Corinthians, they also will call that either the sorrowful letter or the tearful letter.

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There were other letters that Paul wrote that we do not have record of. When he wrote to the Colossians, he said, go read the letter that I wrote to the

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Laodiceans. So we know that he wrote a letter to the church there at Laodicea.

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The way that he concludes 2 Timothy, asking Timothy to bring his writing utensils to him, that leads us to believe that he wrote other letters even after 2

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Timothy, but before his death. Why don't we have record of any of those letters? Well, simply it was not the

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Holy Spirit's intention to preserve those letters. So even if for whatever reason, the tearful letter to the

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Corinthians were to show up somewhere in the world today through some sort of archaeological dig, somebody believes that they found that missing letter from Paul or the letter prior to 1

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Corinthians or his letter to the Laodiceans. Would we then try to take that letter and include it in canon?

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No, I don't think we should, because it was not the Holy Spirit's intention that that letter be preserved for canon.

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Therefore, there's something about it that is not necessarily divinely inspired. Paul wrote it to the

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Corinthians to convict them. It surely would have been a godly letter, but it was not the

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Holy Spirit speaking to this church with the intention of speaking to the church down through the ages.

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So therefore, just because another age has it later on, you know, 2000 years down the line, that doesn't mean that we should now stick it in canon.

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We have canon completed as the Holy Spirit meant for us to have it.

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So we should not be adding to this or taking away from what we have here in these 66 books that we call the

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Bible. So anyway, that really doesn't have to do directly with our reading today, but just wanted to mention that once again.

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Paul had mentioned the sorrowful letter at first. We had talked about this previously in chapter two.

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So in 2 Corinthians 2, I'm going to start here in verse four, where Paul says, for out of much affliction and anguish of heart,

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I wrote to you with many tears, hence being the tearful letter, not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which

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I have abundantly for you. And so Paul says here, even in chapter seven,

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I wrote these things to you, which caused you sorrow, and that caused me sorrow, too. I wasn't trying to make you feel bad.

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That wasn't Paul's intention, but to demonstrate his love for them. So he corrected them like a loving father in a very pastoral way so that they would turn from their sin and turn back to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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It's also back there in chapter two where Paul talked about the man that had sinned against Paul and that he needed to be dealt with.

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There needed to be a discipline upon him because he was opposing to Paul here in this section of the letter.

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In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul talks about how the Corinthians came back to him. Let's look at the previous verses that we finished up with yesterday, verses six and seven.

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But God, who comforts the humbled, comforted us by the coming of Titus, because remember

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Titus was going back to Corinth. He was checking on them there, and then he was going to take a word to Paul about how they received that tearful letter that he had to write to them.

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And then verse seven, not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you as he reported to us your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me.

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So that I rejoiced even more. Notice that statement, your zeal for me. So the

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Corinthians had turned back to the apostle Paul, and that means that they had turned back to the gospel.

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Now, the apostle Paul doesn't save, Jesus saves. But remember, as I said yesterday, the word of an apostle was the same as the word of Christ himself.

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If you rejected the word of an apostle, it was the same as rejecting Christ. So if the Corinthians were being won over by these false teachers, whom

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Paul is going to confront in the last section of this letter, then they are going astray from the gospel.

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They're going after false teachers instead of the true apostles and therefore the true word of Christ.

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And so to come back to Paul was to come back to the gospel again.

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And that was what Paul was rejoicing over. He doesn't have any personal agenda. He's not trying to become rich and famous.

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He is preaching the gospel of Christ and has demonstrated over the course of the letter so far and still parts we will see as we continue on.

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He's demonstrated the kinds of things that he's had to go through for the sake of the Corinthians, preaching the gospel and being persecuted for it.

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He was also vexed in his heart. He will say later on in chapter 10, the daily anxiety that he feels for all of the churches, like the burden that is upon him.

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Anxiety may not be the right word, but it's a burden. It's a daily burden that he experiences for all of the churches, pleading with the

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Lord in prayer, in humble submission, that the work that he did in a city that brought people to Christ, that work would not have been in vain, but that those people would continue in Christ, that they would be steadfast in the faith to the very end.

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And so Paul here having to write this letter to the Corinthians, he was likewise vexed in his heart for them, his desire for them, that they would know the gospel and endure in it.

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And when Titus comes back to him and gives him this report of how well the Corinthians are doing, they received your letter and they repented.

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Well, then that made Paul's heart rejoice even more. Verse eight, for though I caused you sorrow by my letter,

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I do not regret it. Though I did regret it. For I see that my letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while.

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So why does he say, I did not regret it, though I did regret it. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter,

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I do not regret it. In other words, he wouldn't take it back. He's not going to go back and change things and like, well,

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I wish I didn't send them that letter that made them feel so bad. How terrible of me to do that, to make them feel bad.

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Paul would not have taken it back, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't greatly vexed in his heart.

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So hence why he says, I didn't regret it, but I did regret it. For I see that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while.

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It was sorrow for a limited time. And friends, when we are convicted over our sin, we need to feel sorrow over our sin.

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The reason why a person might confess sin but not repent of it is because they didn't truly feel sorrow over it.

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So a person goes to a pastor or they go to a friend and they confess their sin. I got to tell you the kind of sin that I'm wrapped up in right now, and I am convicted over it.

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And so I just wanted to share this with you. I need somebody to hold me accountable. I need to tell somebody so that I can receive forgiveness, whatever reason that they have for coming and confessing that sin.

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So they confess the sin, but then they go away and they just go right back to it again. Why? Because they did not actually feel sorrow over that sin.

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They didn't come to hate their sin the way that God hates sin. They just, you know, maybe they hated being caught.

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Maybe they just had a moment where they were thinking to themselves, boy, this is really bad.

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I better do something about this. But there wasn't a genuine sorrow there that led to going a different direction, which would be what true repentance is.

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To repent is to go the other way. But if they confess the sin and then go back to doing the sin, then there wasn't any real repentance that happened there.

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There wasn't any true sorrow or remorse over that sin. I've experienced this many times.

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I've witnessed it many times. Not too long ago, there was a young man who came to me and he had been fired from his job and he asked my forgiveness for that because he had been caught doing meth.

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So he felt like I let or he let me down. So he was asking for my forgiveness and he was tearful about it, knew that he had messed up.

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And he said, I'm sorry, you know, you didn't even know that I was doing drugs, but I was.

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They did a surprise test on us at work and I got fired. And while he's weeping there, my heart is vexed for him.

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But I'm not going to try to take away from him the sorrow that he's experiencing. He needs to feel bad over that because if he if he doesn't feel broken over his sin, he could just go right back to it again.

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And so I prayed with him. I told him how important it was for him to repent and and that he understood he didn't need my forgiveness.

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He needed God's forgiveness. And so he needed to go before the Lord and confess these things before God. It wasn't too much longer after that that I discovered that he had gone back doing drugs.

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I don't know that it was meth, but he was doing drugs of some kind, found another job, found a way to do drugs that, you know, wasn't going to be as severe as something like meth or maybe he thought he wasn't going to get caught in it.

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But it demonstrated that he really wasn't truly sorrowful over his sin. When he came to me and confessed it to me, he was just sad about being caught.

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He was embarrassed, I'm sure. But he was not really sorrowful about that sin or he would not have gone back to it.

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And so there needs to be this sorrow. And as Paul talks about that sorrow here, it is a sorrow, a godly sorrow that leads to repentance.

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Worldly sorrow leads to death. Let's look at it here. Verse nine,

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I now rejoice not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to repentance.

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For you were made to have godly sorrow. You were made to have godly sorrow like this.

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This was truly of the Holy Spirit that he convicted your heart in this way because you experienced this godly sorrow.

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You were made to have godly sorrow so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us for godly sorrow.

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Here's verse 10. Godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret.

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So you repent, you go back the other direction, you go in the direction of godliness rather than in the direction of your sinfulness, and you don't regret it.

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You are you're not walking in regret anymore. You're able to rejoice in knowing that the grace of God covers you who has rescued you from this sinfulness that you were in.

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Sinfulness that would have led to your death had you continued in it. But God is gracious and he's rescued you from it.

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And so therefore there are no regrets. I'm not in that sin anymore. I'm pursuing righteousness and I've been forgiven by the precious blood of Jesus shed on the cross for my sins.

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So there's no longer regret. Godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.

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But the sorrow of the world brings about death. And that was what this young man, this drug addict experienced when he had regret.

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He experienced a worldly sorrow, which leads to death, led him right back into the same pattern of drug abuse that he was doing before and will eventually lead to his death if he does not repent.

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There were appeals that I made to him to repent after that, and he eventually cut me off. He just didn't want to hear it anymore.

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I still pray for the young man wherever he is. I hope that the spirit will put somebody in his life that will convict his heart and turn him to true and genuine godly repentance.

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Now, while I've seen many times a person confess sin who wasn't truly sorrowful over their sin, there have been occasions, praise the

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Lord, where I have been able to witness genuine repentance. There was a young man who came to me, another young man who was a soldier, and he came to confess to me that he had cheated on his wife.

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And this had happened years ago. It was when he was about to be deployed on his first tour of duty.

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And right before he left, he got intimate with another girl. Now, they did not consummate this adultery, but in his heart, he still knew that he had cheated on his wife, and he felt like his marriage was over, like he had completely destroyed his marriage and couldn't stand it anymore.

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Came to me weeping over this. So my wife, Becky, took his wife, and they went into another room and were talking, and then

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I stayed with him. He just wept over it, just bowed his head and just let the tears fall.

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And I wanted to relieve him somehow, right? I wanted to make him feel better, but I knew he had to experience this sorrow so that he would know this remorse over his sin, that he would hate this sin and never want to return to it again, so that he might receive the forgiveness of Christ and repair his marriage and walk new in the grace of God.

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The Lord forgave him for that sin, and his wife forgave him. And it wasn't long after that that they got pregnant and had a baby.

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And though they had moved away, they still contacted us to let us know, hey, we've added to our family, our family's growing.

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And it was wonderful to rejoice in that, to see God's grace work in that family.

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That was a cause of genuine remorse that led to repentance, of godly sorrow that led to salvation.

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But the sorrow of the world brings about death, a person that will continue in that pattern of sin to their own destruction and worse.

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Paul goes on here as we finish up with verses 11 and 12, for behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow has brought about in you, what vindication of yourselves, right?

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Because they've been declared innocent now. What indignation?

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Because they hate their sin. They hate their former sin that they may not go back to it again. What fear in the fear of God, knowing that he is judge, but he is also gracious and merciful to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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What longing, Paul says, a longing for him, like where he mentions longing there in verse 11, there's a longing for righteousness, but it was a longing to turn back to the apostle

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Paul, because once again, to go back to Paul was to go back to the gospel. What zeal, he says, this was genuine in their hearts, a genuine desire for holiness and for Christ.

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What avenging of wrong in everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.

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In other words, they have been justified or with regards to this person that needed to be disciplined, as Paul talked about in chapter two, the church followed along with it.

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They exercise discipline against this person and had him removed from the congregation.

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And so Paul said back in chapter two, I've forgiven this man. So you need to forgive him as well and restore him, lest he be burdened by excessive sorrow.

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He be destroyed by excessive sorrow. And so the church showed themselves to be innocent in the matter.

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They they judged or punished the one who was guilty and now needed to restore him.

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So now in verse 12, so although I wrote to you, Paul says it was not for the sake of the offender, nor for the sake of the one offended, but that your earnestness on our behalf might be manifested to you in the sight of God.

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So in other words, Paul is extending this to the Corinthians. Look back on this situation.

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What have you learned from this? You have recognized your genuineness for holiness and righteousness in Christ.

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When you were told this man had sinned and you needed to do something about it, you did it and you demonstrated your earnestness in God's word and your desire to live according to it, not just being hearers of the word, but doing what it says so that your earnestness on our behalf, because it was

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Paul and his missionary brethren who brought the word of God to them, your earnestness on our behalf might be manifested to you in the sight of God.

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Now, you know, you've got something that you can look back on and see the genuineness of your faith, because you listened to the instruction that was given to you according to the word of God.

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And my friends, may that be the case with, for every single one of us. We have the Holy Spirit in our hearts, convicting us in such a way that we are earnest to know the word of God, to listen to it and obey it and keep it.

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And when we do something that is contrary to God's word, we break the law.

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When we sin, may the spirit of God be in our hearts to convict us of that sin, that we would experience a godly sorrow, that you would turn from that sin to the

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Lord Jesus Christ, asking for forgiveness. And as I quoted in part a moment ago from 1

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John 1, 9, if we ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Proverbs says there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

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May we walk in a way that is right to God, according to his word. Heavenly Father, work these things out in us.

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And when we have sinned, may we be convicted over that sin, experiencing a godly sorrow that leads to repentance, lest we perish in a worldly sorrow that leads to death.