Man, have I said my share (and more) of “I’m sorry’s.”  And perhaps haven’t we all?  I know that I got to the place that I wished my wife (God rest her soul) would have understood if I just got up in the morning and the first thing I said was “I’m sorry,” because before the day was out I was destined to do something to have to say it anyway.  It might have been more convenient if I could have just gotten up and started the day off with it and just get it out of the way.

            But of course it doesn’t work like that.  To be sorry is to be truly repentant.  If I had have been able to get away with the above scenario it wouldn’t have been a genuine repentance.  There are several things that take place when we come to the Lord in our salvation experience and they can be pretty well summed up in nine descriptive words.  I would like to take some time and talk about those nine words, the first of which is “repentance.”

            Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:9-11, “Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance.  For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.  For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.  For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner:  What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication in all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.”  And then Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 

            Repentance means “reformation, or reversal of another’s decision.”  It takes place when we realize the truth of the Gospel message about Jesus being crucified for our sin and that He rose again to conquer death and that He will reverse the doom of Hell if we will only believe in His sacrifice and resurrection to the point that we are willing to do a complete turn around and begin living a different way.  We believe He has become the final sacrifice for sin; we confess that He is Lord and believe to the point that we are willing to completely change our lives to reflect our belief.  You see many can say they believe but if they don’t reflect that belief in their actions then they really don’t believe.  If we truly believe something we will change our lives to reflect that belief.

            We do that by repentance.  We humble ourselves before God and with everything in us are sorry enough that we change everything about our lives to honor the One Who has set us free from the doom of eternal destruction in Hell.

            There is much that could be said about this subject.  But Paul hit the nail on the head when he said, “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10).  It can all be summed up in two examples, both from the Bible, and both happened when Jesus had been betrayed to be crucified.  The examples are found in the lives of Peter and Judas.

            Peter denied the Lord, cursing and swearing that He did not know Him when our Lord stood before the Sanhedrin on that cold bleak night.  Peter had entered the hall where they had led Jesus, and warmed himself at the fire.  Three times he was accused as being one of the Lord’s disciples and Peter blatantly denied it.  He did it out of fear.  They were judging Jesus and I believe he feared that if he admitted to being with Him they would judge him too.  The Lord had told Peter just hours before that he would deny Him.  Peter didn’t believe it for a moment and he was sincere in that.  But when it came right down to it he did deny Jesus.  He was so ashamed of what he had done and was very sorry for it.  But Peter repented of his sin and was restored to the Lord.

            The second example is found in Judas.  Now we could go into a very extreme doctrinal teaching here but for the sake of this article let’s let it go by saying that he too betrayed Jesus by selling Him out for 30 pieces of silver.  When Judas realized that they were going to have Jesus executed he was sorry for his action.  He went to the Temple to the High Priest and tried to return the money for Jesus’ release.  But it was too late.  He cast the coins down in the Temple and ran off in despair.  Later we are told that he committed suicide in his sorrow. 

            You see, Peter repented with a godly repentance that led him back to the Lord.  But Judas reacted with a worldly sorrow that led to death.  And those are our examples.  We can be sorry but do nothing about it and suffer the curse of eternal death or we can truly repent to the Lord and be restored to Him in eternal life.  The choice is really ours.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.?  Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.