Remorse or Repentance 2 Cor. 7:9 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO

Are you trying to deal with the sin in your life through remorse or repentance?  There is a major difference between these two.  Remorse is merely the sorrow of the world about which Paul wrote in 2 Cor 7:10.  In Webster’s Third International Dictionary, remorse is a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs.  It is self-reproach.

When you try to fight a sin with remorse alone, you are fighting this sin because you feel bad for committing it and you know that you shouldn’t be doing it.  Remorse is a merry-go-round, on which, from time to time, you pass a place where you say, “I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.” But, you just keep going round and round through your guilt, shame, denial, and sin.  It’s a dead-end.  You end up feeling so bad you want to kill yourself or destroy yourself [Matt 27:3-5].

Repentance, on the other hand, is a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that leads to a change of direction and a change of action [Acts 26:20].  In the repentance of 2 Cor 7:10, you say, “I am going to quit this sin because I have decided that that I don’t want to do it anymore.”  You are done.

According to 2 Pet 3:9 the Lord wants you to come to repentance.  He is longsuffering and puts up with you the whole way until you repent.  If you are alive and breathing, the Lord is waiting on you to repent, if you haven’t already.  In essence, he wants you to step off the merry-go-round once and for all.  And when you come to repentance then:

You get saved from the sin – 2 Cor 7:10 – “repentance to salvation” whereby you are born again or, if you are already saved, whereby you are saved as in Phil 1:19.  Jesus name means, “He shall save his people from their sins.”  That’s what he did for the fornicator in 1 Cor 5.

You recover yourself from the snare – 2 Tim 2:25-26 – when you get stuck in sin, the way out is to acknowledge the truth [Jn 8:32] in repentance so that you can get out of the snare.  You must deal with your sin according to the truth of God’s words.

You receive faith for victorious living – Acts 20:21 – Paul preached “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Faith is where you have the continual day by day victory to keep away from the sin you quit [1 Jn 5:4].  And faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God [Rom 10:17].  Daily you strengthen your faith in God’s words and the faith he gives you keeps you from going back to the sin from which you repented.

Once you are walking in truth and faith you find:

The abundance of grace – Rom 5:20 – because God makes it available to you [Rom 5:20-6:2a].  Grace must reign in your life rather than the sin.  Grace reigns when you don’t continue in sin.

The way to escape – 1 Cor 10:13 – because you have turned away from the sin [see 1 Cor 10:5-14], you can clearly see the way to escape that our faithful Father has made for you.

Conclusion: So, what do you choose?  Remorse or repentance?  If you choose repentance, then all of these wonderful things are opened to you because they all depend on repentance not remorse!!