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We’ve all heard someone utter the phrase Good Grief. This is a colloquial way of expressing irritation or dismay. The phrase suggests something negative. In our Christian journey, the concept of good grief actually means what it says: it’s good! It’s a gift from God. Good grief helps us to change the way we think or behave. We can celebrate it because it opens the way to healed relationships with God and others.

 

2nd Corinthians 7:8-13

Repentance

Feb. 20-21, 2010

Hi, my name is Bill Azbell and I am directionally-challenged. What I mean is that I tend to get lost very easily. If I am driving in an unfamiliar area, and I come up to an intersection, and if I take a right, there’s about a 90% chance that I should have taken a left. Knowing that kind of probability, I’ve tried to use reverse psychology on myself in navigating to a destination, so that if I feel like I should take a right, I’ll acknowledge that feeling and do just the opposite, But, somehow, even that doesn’t work.

Now, fortunately, my wife is very gifted in this area. We can be driving down the road, and she can just sense which direction we’re going. She’ll say, “I feel like we’re heading west.” That she can just feel our directional heading amazes me. “What’s that feel like I’ll say?” “Is it a tingly feeling?” “Does it tickle?” “How come I don’t feel that?”

I was out in California recently and I was so excited when a friend lent me her portable TomTom GPS Navigation device, which is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. I could drive the streets of Concord, CA, with extreme confidence. On one particular day, as I set out toward my destination, the GPS shouted at me with great urgency, some words like, “At your earliest opportunity, please turn around and go the other way.” And, I think it added, “knucklehead,” in there somewhere. I was going the wrong way even with a GPS in the car. After a couple days with me, the little TomTom GPS actually asked me, begged me, to return it to its owner.

While not all of us struggle with my particular navigational disorder, we all are directionally-challenged in some very important ways. As in driving, there are so many times in our life when we need to turn around and go the other way. That’s what we’re talking about this morning. We’re in a preaching series entitled, “Where we go from here,” which is intended to help us individually and as a community of faith navigate toward reconciliation, the mending of relationships between ourselves and God, and between one another. So far in our series, we’ve visited the place called reality and the place called humility. Today our destination is a place called repentance.

The Bible is full of expressions of the concept of repentance. When you hear that word, you may think of the fiery prophets of the Old Testament calling for the people to repent, or of John the Baptist in camel-hair clothing preaching repentance in the desert, or Jesus himself calling for it. This morning, we’ll look at the words of one who was also intimately acquainted with this place called repentance, the apostle Paul.

Before we dive in, let me set it up a little bit. After Paul had written his first letter to the Corinthians, the book of First Corinthians, he continued his ministry in Asia, until he learned that his letter hadn’t accomplished what he had in mind. A group of false teachers had visited the church in Corinth. Along with bringing confusion about the gospel, they had challenged Paul’s character and his leadership as an apostle. His letter hadn’t worked, so he decided to pay a visit to the church to try to resolve the issues. Things didn’t go well for Paul. In fact, it was a very painful visit. Apparently, there was conflict on a number of fronts.

Paul left Corinth frustrated and returned to Asia. Because of the problems in Corinth and that painful recent visit, he wrote another letter to them that has been lost to history. It was a severe letter, sometimes called the “tearful letter,” because Second Corinthians says that he wrote it out of anguish and many tears. Apparently, this “tearful letter” addressed one particular issue about an individual who had sinned and in this process had significantly hurt another person. Most scholars think the injured party was Paul himself. Evidently, the Corinthian church had not held the sinner accountable in the matter, and this threatened to fracture the congregation’s relationship to Paul.

Our reading this morning is Paul looking back and reflecting on that “tearful letter” he had sent. The situation had changed a little bit for the better since he wrote it. Let’s look at Second Corinthians 7:8-13.

(Read Text)

After Paul had written that tough letter, holding the Corinthians accountable for their actions, he actually had some second thoughts. He was grieved. He felt bad. He had learned the letter hurt them. Even though Paul is larger than life in our imaginations, he was just a human like us. He didn’t enjoy calling people to the carpet. He worried that he had gone too far in his words, that his severity had made things worse.

That’s the case in our conflicts, isn’t it? It’s not fun going to someone who has wronged us. We worry about hurting feelings, about the possibility that our handling of a situation might drive a deeper wedge in the relationship.

But, things actually turned out well in this situation. Paul’s worry turned to joy. How’s that? Let’s look again at verse 9: “…yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.”

And then in verse 10, Paul offers one of the preeminent statements on the nature of repentance in scripture: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” 

The Biblical concept of repentance is a rich concept, with various shades of meaning in the Old and New Testaments. It can mean to feel regret, to turn or return, and to change your mind. The Greek word Paul uses for repentance here is metanoeo, which literally means to change your mind, but also signifies the idea of turning. Let me propose a working definition by one contemporary author Mike Williamson which I think captures the essence of it. “Repentance is a ‘godly sorrow’ for sin, an act of turning around and going in the opposite direction.” It’s a turning from sin and a turning to God.

Paul is so encouraged because their sorrow was a godly sorrow, which is the beginning of repentance, and not a worldly sorrow, which Paul says leads to death. While Paul doesn’t spell out the meaning of worldly sorrow here, what I think he’s getting at is regret which is self-focused. For example, if you have children, you probably have seen many demonstrations of worldly sorrow. If little Jimmy gets in trouble for hitting his sister little Susie, it could very well be that Jimmy cries over this, but he may not be crying that his sister got hurt, but because he got caught and now he can’t play his Xbox. He’s sorry about the consequence, not the other person. Of course, we adults do the same thing. If you piece a life together like that, it leads to spiritual death.

Godly sorrow is other-focused. If you’ve sinned against another person, godly sorrow would be you owning up to your sin and grieving over how you’ve hurt God’s heart in it, and how you’ve hurt the other person’s heart. This is good and healthy grief because it can lead us to repentance, the turning from destructive behavior and toward God’s ways. That kind of living reflects the way of salvation.

Out of a great sense of regret over its behavior, the Corinthians responded dramatically to Paul’s tearful letter. Not only did they hold the offending congregant accountable, but in their turning toward God in renewed obedience, they turned toward Paul as well with great concern. Our repentance toward God affects our relationships. As we turn and face God again, we turn toward each other in loving relationship.

Paul is so proud. That congregation turned around and faced the other direction, and even more, it began to walk in the other direction. Their actions confirmed their change of heart. This is an important point. Repentance is not just feeling sorry over something. It’s actually about living differently. As Thomas a Kempis says, repentance is fruitful labor. Look at verse 11. There are a number of phrases which describe actual life change in the Corinthian church. In the Greek, these changes are enumerated with seven words, seven pieces of spiritual fruit affected in this congregation by its change of heart. I love how Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, translates verse 11.

And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart.

Wow. You can see why Paul is so thrilled. The situation that was causing him and others so much anxiety and hurt had opened up into these avenues of grace. How did this happen? Wouldn’t you love to read that missing “tearful letter” from Paul to see what he had said? What a masterful communicator and skilled pastor he must have been. When I read through Paul’s letters, I’m in awe at his expertise in approaching these conflicts. Wouldn’t you love for the apostle Paul to come and help us with our particular church conflicts right now? What if he could come and facilitate our process of reconciliation?

Interesting thought, but I’m pretty confident Paul would not attribute the resolution of this particular matter to his personal skill set. Of all people, Paul would have been the first to point to God’s work in Christ and say, “This is all God!” “This is the work of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” In 2 Cor. 5:18, Paul says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:” 

Only God could do such work among such a people. And God’s work among them should give us large doses of hope as a congregation. The Corinthians were hypocrites just like us. They were self-absorbed just like us. They were prideful just like us, and yet God was still at work in them; embers of faith still burned in their hearts. Paul knew this overcoming power of the gospel. Even calls them saints despite everything. The spirit of Christ was still at work, his kindness drawing the Corinthians out of their waywardness, untangling their relational messes. And he’s at work in our messes, day after day after day.

The life of discipleship is a day by day journey, isn’t it? The place of repentance is a part of that daily life. It’s not a one-stop experience. There is, indeed, the concept of repentance at conversion, the experience of a person deciding to leave the sin-pursuing life behind, asking Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. But, it’s not simply something we do at the entrance to the Christian life. The Corinthian believers had already done that; they had converted to Jesus, and here they were repenting again over a particular issue. God calls you and me to a life of ongoing repentance in his presence. Today, we sin and we repent, repurposing our lives toward God. Tomorrow, when we sin again, we repent.

And this repentance stuff is not easy. It sometimes seems easier to just bury the hatchet, rather than get rid of the hatchet altogether. This is part of the Christian life that is not all happy, happy, joy, joy. It’s not a pleasant experience to really look in the mirror at your life and see your sin and feel the guilt of it. It’s not easy to look at others’ sins either and to call them to repentance. It was hard for Paul. I’m sure he spent many sleepless nights under the strain of those broken relationships. And it wasn’t stress-free for the Corinthian church either.

But the people were worth it to Paul. He could do no other than to roll up his sleeves and get involved. He loved them. In Christ, they were his pride and joy. In chapter three, he says they are his letter from Christ, written on his heart. And listen to his words in chapter 7:3: “I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you.”

He knew that Christ had bonded them together in relationship. He knew how important they were to each other, and he wanted the Corinthians to realize that once again. That was the whole reason he had written his letter of rebuke to them. He says as much in verse 12:

So even though I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did the wrong or of the injured party, but rather that before God you could see for yourselves how devoted to us you are.

There are times in my life when I take my wife for granted. I get on auto pilot, going through the motions. And there are those precious moments of clarity when it dawns on me how much I really love this woman. Paul wanted the Corinthians to snap out of it and realize the deep reality of their love and connection to him, their brother in Jesus. And they did. And they repented toward God and toward Paul.

Friends, we matter to each other. Do you realize that the person in front of you and behind you and on either side of you is a love letter from Christ to you? They are precious to you. You may not feel that, or acknowledge that, but that is the reality of our connectedness in Christ. He’s done that for us.

Are you sinning against someone in this part of the body of Christ? In your thoughts, in your words, in your actions, are you sinning against someone in your family, in your workplace, in the neighborhood? Are you walking in the ways of Jesus in your relationships with your fellow disciples? What is your part in the brokenness we’re experiencing as a church body? In the relational strain? I have contributed to it, and so have you, by what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone.

Let’s snap out of it, you and I. You and I need to repent of anything in our lives that is not of God. And we need to turn toward each other again, before God, and as the apostle Paul says, make room in our hearts for one another. Can we do that one person, one conversation at a time? Paul shows us the joy that awaits us just past the place called repentance, the joy of relationship with God and each other. Let’s stop robbing God and one another of that joy. Who is the first person you need to talk to?

We’re going to end our service with some time to reflect in silence on our brokenness before God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:5: Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Let’s examine ourselves in the light of God’s love and kindness to us, in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. During this silence, we’re going to put on the screen a prayer of repentance, if you’d like to use that to focus your meditations. After our time of silence, we’re going to have a time when you can speak these words out loud, if you feel led to add your voice. Let’s go to God.