Check it out next time and see for yourself.
Whenever the word “sin” is dropped in casual conversation, the reactions are usually all over the board, ranging anywhere from hysterical snorting to awkward navel-gazing.
I know this because my reactions have been anything but consistent over the years too. But any giggling has become a thing of the past, because I’ve come to understand that sin isn’t a funny topic to the man who really understands the consequences of it.
On the other hand, I’ve learned to salt any knowledge of a brother’s ungodly behavior with a few grains of optimism. Because if he’s done some of the same stupid things that I’ve done, it’s possible the Lord would also allow the necessary circumstances needed for him to decide to change the direction he’s headed—that is, to repent.
[What exactly is repentance? see: Climbing the Ladder of Repentance [1]]
So repentance provides the spiritual infrastructure for the faithful disciple of Jesus Christ to build and demonstrate the changes he professes to have made.
But sorrow is necessary to start that ball rolling.
In his second letter to “the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achaia,” the apostle Paul clarified the value of repentant sorrow:
“For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. I did regret it, for I see that that letter caused you sorrow—though only for a while. I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance, for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.
For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you. What vindication of yourselves. What indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.” [2Cor. 7:8-11] [my emphasis]
The saints in Corinth had shown that they were “innocent in the matter.” In context, the “matter” was godly sorrow, the kind that brings a man to his knees in repentance. Paul used the Greek word ἁγνός [ãgnõs: pure, holy, chaste, innocent] to suggest that they had set themselves apart—or made themselves pure as a result of the sorrow they’d experienced.
Sorrow is an inevitable consequence of living in this age. However, enduring godly sorrow doesn’t make a lot of sense to the world.
But for the disciple of Jesus Christ, there’s only one river where the water of life flows.
And the cup of sorrow is one he had to drink from.