A few years ago, Forbes came out with “The 25 Biggest Regrets In Life: What Are Yours?” They are as follows:
1. Working so much at the expense of family and friendships.
2. Standing up to bullies in school and in life.
3. Stayed in touch with some good friends from my childhood and youth.
4. Turned off my phone more.
5. Breaking up with my true love or Getting dumped by them.
6. Worrying about what others thought about me.
7. Not having enough confidence in myself.
8. Living the life that my parents wanted me to live instead of the one I wanted to.
9. Applying for that "dream job" I always wanted.
10. Been happier more, not taken life so seriously.
11. Gone on more trips with family and friends.
12. Letting my marriage break down.
13. Taught my kids more.
14. Burying the hatchet with a family member or old friend.
15. Trusting that voice in the back of my head more.
16. Not asking that girl or boy out.
17. Getting involved with the wrong group of friends when I was younger.
18. Not getting that degree in high school or in college.
19. Choosing the practical job over the one I really wanted.
20. Spending more time with the kids.
21. Not taking care of my health when I had the chance.
22. Not having the courage to get up and talk at a funeral or important event.
23. Not visiting a dying friend before they died.
24. Learning another language.
25. Being a better father or mother.
Regret can be one of those things that gnaws at us, as we think of what could have been. But we can’t. Unless Doc Brown arrive in a Délorean, we can’t undo the things that have been done. But what we can do, is fix those regrets that we personally do that impact others in sinful ways. That fix is what the Bible calls repentance. Repentance is recognizing the wrong and sinful things that we have done against God and others, seeking forgiveness, and turning from those things into new life.
And it’s this idea of repentance that brings us back to our to our summer series where we’ll be picking it back up in 2nd Corinthians 7:2. And as we start in verse 2 of chapter 7 in 2nd Corinthians, let’s look back on the last few weeks.
In our notes pages, until we get to another section break, we’re only going to look at the section we’re currently covering.
At the begging of the second section of 2nd Corinthians, after Paul’s opening about his joy over the Corinthian’s repentance, he began to tell them to move forward in their faith. Because when we repent of a sin, God doesn’t want us to stay in a woe is me, or stuck place in our faith. Instead he wants us to move forward. So at the start of his second section, Paul encourages the Corinthians to understand they are breakable, meaning they can sin, so they must handle God’s word correctly, and do so to please the Lord.
After that, he calls them to new creation living; that living removes obstacles that we place in front of the Gospel, and realize that we possess everything because we have Jesus.
Then last week, we began to look at a connective thought of Paul’s that we had to split in two for time sake. The first part of that thought was how Paul communicated God’s desire that we are unrestricted in our lives. Not unrestricted to commit sin, but unrestricted to love God, and love people as we were created to do. We do this by submitting our will to the Father’s, which will separate us from sin, and love others as he first loved us.
With that in mind, we turn our attention to to the second part of Paul’s thought, as we pick back up in 2nd Corinthians 7:2. Let’s read together.
“2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.
“5 For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more. 8 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 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.
“10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. 12 So although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. 13 Therefore we are comforted.
“And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 14 For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true. 15 And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. 16 I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.”
v.2-10
We saw last week that Paul started out his thought with telling the Corinthians that his mouth and heart were open to them. He wanted them to open their hearts as well. Here Paul brings this open heart idea up again, but notice it’s not a wide open heart. Instead Paul tells them to make room, it’s almost a, “hey here’s a small step in widening your heart.” Paul’s goal is that the Corinthians have an open book life, like he does, but he knows it takes time, so he’s encouraging them to start small. Start with Paul, widen their hearts, towards him.
Why does Paul ask that they start with him? Because he hasn’t done anything wrong to them. They know him. They know his love for them. How he does’t condemn them, how he hasn’t taken advantage of them, how he hasn’t corrupted people. Instead he has loved them, encouraged them, and taken pride in them. He views them as ride or die friends. People that he would suffer a lot for.
It’s here in verse 5 that Paul again gives them insight into how his last trip to them effected him. He wrestled with how to confront the situation, so he wrote the letter that is now lost to us. He then fought his own thoughts about how it would go. But God comforted him when Titus returned with good news. Because the Corinthians made room for Paul in their hearts. They repented and he rejoiced.
And this is what we talked about in the first section of the letter, Paul had restoration in mind when he wrote the third lost letter. Though he didn’t like grieving the Corinthians, there is a godly grief that leads to repentance. When we experience godly grief, we acknowledge our sin and need to go before God and repent. We realize, we regret, and we seek God for change.
So Paul let’s the Corinthians know that godly grief leads to repentance, while regular grief, or the worldly grief, produces death. What he means by that, is there’s no real change in worldly grief. There might be an acknowledgement, or regret, that somethings wrong, but we close our hearts to God who works to make things right. That closed off position means the Word of God isn’t in us. It means that we might not have salvation, or it means we are in a bad places of rebellion. It means we are lost and need to be found. We need regeneration.
v.11-16
It’s in verse 11 that Paul begins his encouragement of the Corinthians. Pointing out what they have overcome and what God had done through the pointing out of the sin. The Corinthians have overcome a great battle in their faith and because of that Paul is comforted.
In all of this, Paul has used a lot of we language, and in the second part of verse 13 we find out why. It’s not just Paul who was comforted and Paul who was rejoicing. It was other believers and especially Titus. Titus came back rejoicing at what happened. And Paul gives us a tiny hint as to what might have occurred before Titus went off to deliver that lost letter.
In verse 14 Paul writes, “For whatever boasts I made to him about you, I was not put to shame. But just as everything we said to you was true, so also our boasting before Titus has proved true.” It almost seems like after Paul wrote the lost letter, he told Titus that the Corinthians would repent. But think about it from Titus’ perspective. He was walking into a situation where they already hurt Paul, and now Paul was writing a letter to call them out on that hurt. Do you think Titus was a happy messenger? There’s a reason why we have that saying, “don’t shoot the messenger.” But before Titus leaves, Paul is saying they’ll repent, I know it.
Titus’ rejoicing now equals Paul’s, because he saw firsthand the transformation of repentance in the Corinthians’ lives. Paul was proved right, and Titus is joyful about it. It’s here that Paul ends this two week connective thought, with the words in very 16, “I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.”
When I read those words they reminded me of Jesus words in the parable of of the Tenants in Matthew 25, “Well done, good and faithful servant (v.23b).”
Paul let’s them know that they have his godly love, they have his godly pride, and they have his godly confidence. Because if a person can learn that they need to walk in repentance, they have achieved a great milestone in their faith. A heart and mind that seeks God in repentance when their sin is presented to them, is a heart and mid that is fixed on the Lord. And it’s in such a life, that the Lord looks on and says that is a good and faithful servant.
Combing the connecting thought together, God is calling us to a life that is unrestricted because it’s based in repentance. One thing that restricts us, is when we see a problem and we don’t do anything about it.
A few weeks ago the west celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It was a massive invasion of Normandy France by the Allied forces against the Nazis, with more than 150,000 troops coming by sea and by air. Before the invasion began General Eisenhower drafted this line that was never published, “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.” The invasion was an uncertain but a necessary risk. Think if the Allies saw what Hitler and his axis were doing and did nothing. If the Allies hadn’t made the attempt, what would our world look like today? Who knows? But they saw the problem and dealt with it.
That’s what repentance is, it’s seeing the problem of sin in our lives and dealing with it.
How do we deal with it? Through confession. In his first letter to the churches in Asia Minor, John wrote, “7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:7-9).”
Even to the churches, to established Christians, the Apostle John, who walked with Jesus, reminds them that they can’t say they have no sin, because that’s deceit, that’s a restriction on the relationship between them and God. But Jesus’ blood cleanses us from sin, and by doing so, has taken away the punishment and the idea that we need to hide from God to cover it up.
No, confession is the way now. Repentance is how the believer should live their life. We are called to unrestricted love for God and for people, it starts with a heart and mind that knows repentance is good of the child of God. And it’s something we do regularly. When sin happens, we don’t brush it aside, we acknowledge it and turn to God for further transformation. There’s not one of us in here who doesn’t need more of the transforming work of God in us. We all need to become more adept at being repentant.
My challenge for you this week is to continue to develop an unrestricted repentant life. When sin happens, when that person irks you and you lash out in anger, or that other person looks good and you stumble in your desire, or that news report comes on and you worry. Don’t brush it off, don’t be restricted by letting sin regain power in your life that is has no business having. Instead turn to God, and say something like, “Father that wasn’t right, it wasn’t godly, I turn from it, repenting of what you have save me from. I know Jesus’ blood cleanses me of that sin, and I ask for the transforming work of the Holy Spirit to happen in me. Amen.”
God is calling us to unrestricted lives where repentance is first nature to us. Where he is glorified in our turning away from sin and relying on him moment by moment. So let us be people of repentance, that we might be truly unrestricted in our fellowship with God. Amen.
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