“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to

salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”

(II Corinthians 7:10 — Revised Standard Version)

Shakespeare has a line about the “sweet sorrow” which describes lovers’ partings. Juliet from her balcony calls to Romeo: “Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night ‘till it be morrow.”

There is a similar sentiment about sweet sorrow in St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Christians where he says he rejoices because his first letter grieved them. What a strange remark from a saint! Sounds sort of spiteful, doesn’t it? In the midst of a letter of love and friendship freely expressed, we find the Apostle saying, “I don’t regret that I grieved you. I’m not sorry that I made you sad — because you were grieved into repenting. It was a godly grief, a sweet sadness, so I’m glad of it.”

The ancient Apostle’s words are faintly reminiscent of that unbelievable remark our fond parents were wont to make as they bent us across their knees and reached for the hairbrush: “This hurts me worse than it does you.”

What St. Paul is doing here is making a distinction between a godly grief and a worldly grief. There is a difference you know. And it is pretty important for each one of us that we understand the difference. “For godly grief,” says the Apostle, “produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.” (II Corinthians 7:10 — Revised Standard Version) Godly grief is the kind that results in repentance of sin, turning from it, and entering into happy, friendly relations with God, which is salvation. So, when one looks back on that sorrow, he is grateful for it — doesn’t regret it at all — because he sees that it turned him from the wrong to the right.

On the other hand, worldly grief is the kind of sorrow which produces no inner soul searching, no admission of personal guilt and wrong, but results rather in resentment, bitterness, self-righteousness, and vengeance. And the inevitable end of such worldly grief, St. Paul says, is spiritual death.

1. A. Stuart inThe Expositor’sDictionary of Texts observes: “All sorrow for sin is not godly sorrow, and does not always work repentance. Sorrow for sin may issue either in spiritual life or spiritual death. There are many reasons why men sorrow for sin. Some sorrow and grieve because they have been caught in disgraceful conduct and exposed to public rebuke, other men grieve over sin because of the loss of self-esteem; they are the hot tears which flow from pride. There is a great difference, for instance, in King Saul’s chagrined cry, ‘I have played the fool,’ and in the poor publican’s prayer, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’”

We all make mistakes. We all sin. We need to be reproved, corrected, shown the error of our ways — all of us do, so that we may turn and not persist in them. And it is a gracious part of the mercy of our God in His dealings with us that He sends or makes room for this reproving and correcting which first brings sorrow or grief to our hearts.

Soren Kierkegarrd, that gifted theologian with rare insight into human nature and into the ways of God with man, speaks of grief and remorse as guides which God has put in the soul of man to call him back from the evil to the good. The stinging pain which throbs in a man’s hand when he touches a red hot stove is intended as a blessing to cause the burned one to draw his hand back quickly before the whole hand and arm are destroyed. So the guides’ remorse or grief over sin, is not put in man’s soul by the Eternal for the purpose of causing him unhappiness but for the purpose of calling him back from the evil to the place where true happiness may be found.

We can well imagine that when the returned Prodigal looked back from the joys of His Father’s house upon the far country, the remembrance of the pig’s sty had about it a sweet sadness, for it was there that he came to himself and said, “I will arise and go unto my Father.”

“So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere is its friendship, that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all. A man can wish to slink away from many things in life, and he may even succeed, so that life’s favored one can say in the last moment: ‘I have slipped away from all cares under which other men suffered.’ But if such a person wishes to defy, or to slink away from remorse, alas, which is indeed the most terrible to say of him, that he failed, or that he succeeded?” (Kierkegaard)

Yes, it is a gracious part of the mercy of our God that in His dealings with us He makes room for this reproving and correction which first brings sorrow or grief to our hearts. How we take it, though, determines whether or not it turns out a worldly grief that produces bitterness and resentment and ends in spiritual death, or a godly grief, a sweet sadness, unto repentance and salvation.

The divine correction and reproof may come to us in many forms. Sometimes it comes in the counsel of a friend or the admonition of a parent. That is the avenue God’s grace followed in working on the Corinthian Christians. It came through the medium of straight talking by a friend. Paul pointed out their errors and faults. It hurt, as most straight talking does, but it worked out in the end to repentance and that brought joy.

A man went to a dear friend who had been overtaken in a vicious habit which was ruining his health, his home, and his profession. The friend bluntly announced: “I’m going to say something to you which will make me either your very closest friend or your worst enemy.” Why did he say that? Because he was going to talk straight about that man’s sin — because he knew such talk would hurt to the heart — and because he knew all turned upon whether the hurting, cutting thing was accepted as a grief which produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, or whether it would bring a worldly grief bubbling up in hot resentment at the one who served as God’s instrument of reproof and turning the sinner’s heart into bitterness and hardness which produces in the end spiritual death.

Sometimes the divine correction comes through the reading, teaching or preaching of God’s word. When the true and righteous word of the Eternal God confronts my soul and convicts me of sin, what happens? Inevitably the sharp stab of pain shoots through my soul. I’m found out, shamed. Like Isaiah of old I am forced to cry: “Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” God’s holy word of reproof and correction hurts — surely it does. That is a part of the mercy of the Lord. But the hurt is not the important thing. What I do next when the hurt comes, that’s the most important thing. Does it humble me to repentance, or does it make me get my back up in injured pride?

In the popular novel, No Trumpets Before Him, the crusading young minister of a fashionable church brought one Sunday morning a stinging rebuke to loyal church-goers who owned and operated dismal, disease infested tenement houses which disgraced the city and degraded the bodies and souls of their tenants. The young minister brought the searchlight of God’s word in judgment upon such inhumanity. And what was the immediate result? Why, hurt feelings, and injured pride on the part of the woman who was the principal owner of the tenements. She grew bitter in her remarks and actions. But gradually with her it worked its way into a godly grief which brought repentance, removal of the offense to God and man, and a reconciliation with her God. She found a new peace of mind and heart, a new level of righteous and unselfish living, but it all came about by passing through a vale of desperate sadness. Yet in looking back it appeared as truly a godly grief, a sweet sadness.

One of the most regrettable and discouraging aspects of the church’s ministry of teaching and preaching is the repeated canceling out of the merciful correction God would bring to human lives, by man’s turning what God intends for godly grief into worldly grief of resentment, wounded pride and bitterness.

What a noble example of how we should receive the correcting, reproving word of God in our lives, is afforded us by King David. Truly David’s sin had been grievous — lusting for another man’s wife, sending that man, his own faithful friend and loyal captain, to sudden death in defense of David’s kingdom, and then taking for his own the wife of the murdered friend. Oh, it was a grievous sin. But when Nathan, God’s prophet, confronted David with his sin, and soundly reproved him, instead of standing self-righteously on his absolute power as monarch of the land, King David’s heart was torn by godly grief that produced repentance. Humbly David cried unto God saying: “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me.”

Sometimes the correction and reproof of our God comes to us through the adverse circumstances of life: a business failure, a great disappointment, a serious accident. Great is our grief — deep our sorrow and pain.

A woman suffered a very painful accident. Long weeks her broken body was racked with pain. One day she asked a clergyman: “Was it God’s will that this terrible calamity befell me and that I suffer all this?” The minister answered by saying that neither the word of God nor the wisdom of man had a satisfying solution for the problem of evil and pain in this world. We just know that it is here. We don’t know why. But this, he said, we do know of a certainty, from the scriptures, that God intends every adventure of our lives, whether we call them fortunate or calamitous, be for our correction and perfection. And surely in her case, it was God’s will for her in all her suffering that her sorrow should be a godly sorrow, purifying her spirit, enlarging her sympathy, and bringing her into a more intimate, trusting relationship with her God. It was not God’s will that she turn it into a worldly sorrow producing bitterness, resentment, and spiritual death. Her painful hospital experience had immense possibilities for good or evil in her soul, but God meant it for good.

Joseph, in Egypt, to his brethren whom he had rescued and saved from famine although in years gone by they had cruelly sold him, their little brother, into slavery and started a whole chain of what appeared to be calamitous circumstances, said: “As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”

The circumstances of our lives are but the servants of God’s will for us, fraught with tremendous possibilities of accomplishing wonderful things in us and through us. He means it all for good — if we will so use it. It was of this divine plan that the Apostle was thinking when he said: “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” And what is God’s purpose for each of us? And what is the good that He would always be working in our lives? That we should be happy and prosperous? That we should escape all calamities of this world, and have health and wealth? Ah, no. The purpose of God for our lives, what He calls the highest good, is stated in the next verse of the Roman Epistle — “that we should conform to the image of His son,” that we might become Christ-like in our characters. This is the high aim and goal and purpose of God for each of us. That we might be perfected in Christ-likeness. And even of God’s son, the sacred writer says, “He was made perfect through the things He suffered.”

So, we know even this sad, comforting truth, that the correction and reproof of our God comes to us in the harsh, heart-breaking circumstances of life — that our Heavenly Father intends that each sorrow shall be for us a “godly sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of.”

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

O God, most holy and most merciful, in our weakness and in the multitude of our transgressions, we turn to Thee. Receive the confessions which now and always mingle with our thanksgivings and aspirations. Absolve us from our sin. From our shame and stain do Thou cleanse us. From every weakening and defiling thought do Thou deliver us. Help us to overcome the evil in our hearts, and all base love and fear of the world. Amid the strife of conflicting impulses and interests save us from the mean surrender. Let not Thy good gifts prove a snare to us; let not the light from heaven lead us astray; let not our best affections and desires betray us. In all the relations of life may we ever love, seek and serve the highest. Help us to shape the earthly things after the heavenly patterns. From day to day may we submit ourselves to be ruled and guided even as Thou wilt. May every day of this new week be a day of obedience and charity, a day of following in the footsteps of Him who loved and obeyed Thy perfect will perfectly.

Everlasting God! How few are our days and how swiftly do they fly! Help us, while for us the light shines and the darkness lingers, to do with our might what Thou hast set us to do. Be our Stay and our Strength till for us these earthly seasons cease; and when we have passed through the last mortal darkness, be Thou, O Lord God, our everlasting Light. We pray this not only for ourselves here this morning, but also for all Thy faithful servants who know they draw near our world’s last frontier and make ready to receive Thy glad welcome.

• Scripture Reference: 2 Corinthians 7:6-13 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Grief and repentence; Spiritual growth through suffering; 635 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 1/9/1949 • Last Preached: 5/30/1950 • Rating: 4 • Book/Author References: No Trumpets Before Him; The Expositor”s Dictionary of Texts, E. A. Stuart