Sometimes a phrase will pop up in the Bible that takes me by surprise. Though I’ve read it several times through, still I find new things as if I’d never seen them before! This is the beauty of God’s Word, this living text, that inspires and convicts and breathes life into the believer.
Recently I came across the phrase “godly grief,” found in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, also called “godly sorrow” in another version.
We are familiar with grief and sorrow, and those terms are found in scripture. But what is different about godly sorrow, as it is used in the Bible?
First real grief (or sorrow). There is a deep feeling of loss in the death of a loved one, or the loss of one’s health or material goods such as income or property. This is the ache, the emptiness, the yearning, mourning, for what you’ve had.
Job, in the Bible, lost everything: his family, wealth, and health. All he had left was his life, such as it was, and his integrity. We know that he never cursed God for his losses. His quote is familiar to us: when his wife advised him to “curse God and die,” he replied, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” (NASB, Job 2:9-10).
And then there is godly sorrow—something I believe is more heart-wrenching, but it is God’s tool which produces great joy in the end.
Paul mentions godly sorrow in 2 Corinthians. In his first letter, he had chastised the church in Corinth for the way they had returned to their previous lifestyles, not displaying their new faith. He set them straight in several areas, sternly and lovingly, as a parent would a wayward teen.
In his next letter, he says that though he regrets causing them sorrow, he does not regret the “godly sorrow” that his letter produced in them. What kind of paradox is this?
Just like a parent who says, “Believe me, you’ll thank me later,” Paul knew that he needed to reprimand them so that they could make changes and become more mature in their faith. This was Paul’s method to bring them to repentance.
“As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (ESV, 2 Corinthians 7:9-10).
Repentance is God’s gift, one step along His way of saving us. We cannot be saved until we know we need saving. And how do we come to that knowledge? We face our sins, those myriad ways we have fallen short of God’s perfection. Suddenly we see them; the Holy Spirit has laid them all bare to us, in all their ugliness. We realize there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, to make ourselves clean from the sins we have committed.
This is not a “Gee, I’m sorry I got caught” kind of grief. That’s easy to manufacture, and it doesn’t produce true repentance leading to salvation. No, God is gracious to show us how guilty we are, and He mercifully teaches us that there’s no way we can make it better on our own.
My desire for cleanliness, for mercy when I should be declared guilty, comes about because God has granted me the godly sorrow that leads to repentance.
Peter denied Christ three times on the night of His arrest. He had no self-awareness of the fact that he had sinned so blatantly—until a rooster crowed, something Jesus had told him ahead of time: “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” In self-protection mode, Peter denied Him to anyone who thought they’d seen him with Jesus, and when the rooster crowed, “…he went out and wept bitterly.” It was the remembrance of his vow never to deny Jesus, and Jesus’ prophecy that indeed he would (NASB, Matthew 26:34, 75). Peter was heartbroken that he had sinned by denying Jesus in an attempt to protect his own skin. Imagine how deeply Peter grieved.
Mercifully, upon Jesus’ resurrection, He asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter answered that yes, he did. Peter was distressed that Jesus would ask three times, but here Christ showed Peter the sweet grace of forgiveness after his deep, godly sorrow. One declaration of love for each denial Peter had made.
King David took another man’s wife and then arranged to have that man killed in battle. When the prophet Nathan pointed out David’s sin (we refuse to “see” our own sin until God reveals it to us!), David repented: “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). For seven days he fasted, on the ground, in great grief. He penned two Psalms, Chapters 32 and 51, recounting his godly grief, repentance, and forgiveness.
“How blessed,” writes David, “is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit! When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord;’ and You forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:1-5).
How beautiful to see one’s own sin for what it is—a crime against God—and recognize it, and experience first great grief—godly grief—and then the sweet relief of forgiveness when we have repented!
Godly grief, then, is a gift from God, the means He uses to bring us to repentance that leads to salvation.
Writing Rhetorically 