For grief according to God works repentance to salvation, never to be regretted; but the grief of the world works death.
Paul had written a letter that hurt the Corinthians, and for a while he almost wished he had not sent it. Now he has heard how they took it. So he weighs what their grief did in them, and he lays down a test that tells apart two sorrows that can look the same from outside.
Darby describes what Paul's first letter started inside them: a broken will, not a frightened soul.
Still it was godly sorrow, a broken will, a broken heart. The feeling was this: I have been following my own will, I have forgotten God. The illusion of a perverse will is gone, and the working of God's nature in us begins. Where the soul feels this rightly, there is no fear. There is no thought that God will hold the sin against it or condemn it. There is sorrow and grief of heart that it followed self-will. This works a far more active, deliberate judgment of evil, called repentance here.
The verse does not say that sorrow is repentance. It says the one produces the other. Pridham marks the difference.
The distinction between sorrow and repentance is clearly marked. The first leads to the second. The one is passing; the other lasts and keeps working. Godly sorrow shows a state of feeling; repentance is an active purpose of the heart, which by its nature grows into a habit.
Kelly rules out two things people mistake for repentance, then says what it is.
Even sorrow, however deep, is not repentance, though sorrow according to God works it out. It is also not correct to confuse repentance with conversion to God... Repentance is the soul, as born of God, sitting in judgment on the old man and its acts, its words and its ways... So Scripture calls it repentance not about God, but "toward God". The conscience then takes His side in self-judgment before Him, and weighs everything as in His sight.
Older translations read "repentance... not to be repented of", which sounds circular. Darby notes that the second word is a different one.
But in 2 Corinthians 7:10 a second word is used, completely different; it should read: "Repentance to salvation, never to be regretted."
Why can no one regret it? Pridham points to what repentance does.
Repentance cannot be repented of, since it is a turning from evil to good, and from oneself to God. So by its very nature it leads to life and salvation. It is a working thing: in a sinner its effect is conversion, in a saint restoration. In either case its end is peace.
Grief over sin can be entirely about oneself. Mawson traces what happens when the pain is only about the fallout.
The second is the sorrow that goes with fear of the consequences, and not because the sin itself is hateful. This is an entirely selfish experience... In this sorrow the devil seems very near. He mocks the soul in its distress and increases its fears. Again and again the soul vows that if it can escape the consequences, it will avoid that trap in future. The devil can mock with confidence, for he knows that as long as the soul is self-centred, it will go back to the same sin.
Hamilton Smith names the man whose sorrow shows where that road ends.
How different is the sorrow of this world! We see it in the solemn case of Judas. His sorrow does not last a season; it lasts for eternity. It was not godly but merely human. And instead of working repentance, it led only to death.
Paul is writing to believers. So the "salvation" here is rescue from the sin itself.
The repentance and salvation Paul speaks of there are the repentance and salvation of Christians... Godly sorrow had taken the place of shameless glorying in evil. This sorrow for their sin worked repentance: it led the Corinthian believers to turn from their evil course and clear themselves from the wrong they had allowed. Repenting in this way, they were saved from going further down the hill of decline... It shows that when a believer sins, his repentance should be as real and as practical as we expect a sinner's first repentance to be.
If repentance goes this deep, how does anyone reach it? Stuart answers that no one produces it in himself.
He who was crucified is exalted to give repentance and forgiveness of sins... Effort, hard work and self-punishment are all useless. He gives it, as we learn. The word of God works it in the soul, acting on the conscience by the power of the Spirit.
- Two sorrows. Both are sincere and both hurt; one is about the sin, the other about the consequences.
- Sorrow works. Godly sorrow is not the finish line. It is the feeling that produces repentance — a settled purpose of heart that keeps working.
- Repentance judges. It is the renewed soul taking God's side against itself, weighing its own words and ways in His sight.
- Never regretted. You can regret a painful letter, a painful season, even a painful confession — you will never regret this.
- Given, not achieved. Effort and self-punishment achieve nothing. Christ, now exalted, gives repentance by His word working on the conscience.
For, behold, this same thing, your being grieved according to God, how much diligence it wrought in *you*, but [what] excusing [of yourselves], but [what] indignation, but [what] fear, but [what] ardent desire, but [what] zeal, but [what] vengeance in every way ye have proved yourselves to be pure in the matter.
Paul's first letter to Corinth had wounded the church. Here he lists what that wound produced: seven marks left by a grief that came from God. The verse raises a question every reader faces. How do you tell real repentance from mere regret?
Each word in Paul's list names a change in a church that had let a scandal sit unjudged. The writers below quote an older translation, which reads "carefulness" for "earnestness," "vehement desire" for "longing," and "revenge" for "punishment."
"Carefulness" or "earnestness" stands in happy contrast to their earlier slackness. "Clearing of themselves" describes how readily they took up the solemn duty of judging the offence, once his earlier letter had stirred them. "Indignation" is the right word for the just and natural feeling that woke in their minds. Their eyes were newly opened, and they saw how great the evil was that they had left unjudged for so long. It was a feeling directed no more against the wrongdoer than against themselves. The "fear" he speaks of pointed first to the Lord, and then to Paul.
The last three words carry the list from feeling into action.
"Vehement desire" may seem very strong here. But the First Epistle had clearly struck them deeply, and awakened warm affection toward the Lord. "Zeal" follows. Last is "revenge" or "vengeance." This would speak of the actual judgment of the evil among them, and the putting away of the wicked man of 1 Corinthians 5.
Grief on its own proves nothing.
Grief may arise, and even reach a passionate extreme, and yet have as little changing effect on the person as summer dew on a rock… So the difference between sorrow and repentance is clear. The first leads to the second. The one is passing. The other lasts and keeps working. Godly sorrow shows a state of feeling. Repentance is an active purpose of the heart, and by its nature it grows into a habit.
That is why the test of repentance is deliverance, not tears.
This scripture shows us very clearly what genuine repentance really is. It is not quite sorrow for sin, though godly sorrow of that sort is part of it… The right sort of repentance is repentance to salvation. That is, it means deliverance from the thing repented of. Mere sorrow for sin, when a person faces its consequences, is the kind the world can have. It works death, not salvation. Judas Iscariot is a sad example of this.
This was not a conversion. The Corinthians already belonged to Christ, and still had to repent.
In its fruit in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10, they sorrowed to repentance; godly sorrow worked repentance. Here they were converted long ago, and had believed long ago. But they had been in a bad state, and had repented. You can see how it showed itself in verse 11.
Paul's closing verdict is that at every point they proved themselves innocent in the matter. Removing the offender was never the whole point.
Simply putting the wicked person outside, important as that may be, is not what comforted the apostle's heart. What comforted him was the working of deep and shared moral feelings among them all… Merely to be done with the offender would show in others an unexercised conscience, or else judicial hardness.
The sin they had tolerated involved the whole church, not just the man who committed it.
His words in the second Epistle show his thought: they were involved in the evil by allowing it. "At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter." His complaint was that there was sin, leaven — not just a sinner, but sin among them.
Kelly asks for more than the offender's own sorrow.
If we want God's will, it is not enough that the offender be truly repentant. God's people too, when they have to deal with a grievous case, should humble themselves and in grace bear the shame as if it were their own.
- Sorrow starts it. Grief can be strong and still change nothing. Godly grief is the seed, repentance is the crop, and only repentance lasts.
- Fruit proves it. Paul does not take their word for it. He reads seven marks: earnestness, clearing, indignation, fear, longing, zeal, punishment.
- Believers need it. The Corinthians had believed long before. Repentance here is a Christian judging himself, not a first conversion.
- The body owns it. Sin they tolerated made the whole church a party to it. The whole church, not one man, had to clear itself.
- Grace ends it. Paul's aim was never just to expel a man. He wanted a shared humbling, so that he could say they had proved themselves innocent.