Good Grief

1:05It's a funny expression, isn't it? What does that mean exactly? Good grief. Well, today in 2 Corinthians 7, Paul is going to help us understand exactly what good grief is. And not only that, he's going to help us understand the difference between good grief, or what he calls in the text godly grief, and bad grief. What he calls worldly grief. We're going to learn in our text today that godly grief leads to salvation, but worldly grief leads to death. Let's jump into the text here, verse 2 of chapter 7.

1:49You see right away he appeals to the Corinthians once more to do what? To make room for us. Most Bible translations add the phrase, and maybe yours does too, in your hearts. So make room in your hearts for us. And the reason most translators add that phrase in there, even though it's not present in the Greek, is because if you go back to chapter 6, verses 11 through 13, Paul is asking them to widen their hearts also.

2:18His argument back there in the previous chapter was, listen, you guys are restricted in your love for us, but it's not because of anything that we're doing. You're just restricting your love for us on your own accord. And maybe the reason for that was because false teachers had come in, as we know, and they had started leveling charges against Paul and his companions. And those charges seem to be listed in some response or in some way in this response that Paul makes in verses 2 through 4.

2:48He seems to address them. First, Paul says here that he and his team have not sinned against the Corinthians. He uses the word wronged them. And this is. Probably in reference to the fact that they had promised to return to Corinth, but many circumstances that we've talked about this semester had prevented that. It wasn't that they weren't keeping their word. It wasn't that they were sinning against them or wronging them. It was that they literally couldn't go.

3:14They wanted to go, but they couldn't. The second charge that they seem to be responding to here is that they've led the Corinthians astray. Paul uses the word corrupted them. And that charge seems to be leveled at the idea that they led them astray in the sense that they were teaching and preaching Jesus Christ and not the law of Moses. They had laid out these regulations from the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 about things related to the Gentiles and what foods could and couldn't be touched. And they said, listen, all these things are clean. Christ has declared all things clean, so you should just abstain from these few things. And it seems like the Judaizers, these Jewish leaders who had come in, it seems like they didn't like that very much. They didn't think they were being hard enough, coming down hard enough on the Gentiles and some of those practices.

4:06And so Paul says, not only did we not wrong you, we also didn't corrupt you. And then third and finally, they're responding to this charge that Paul and his team were taking money from them. He uses the word taken advantage of the phrase taken advantage of them. Remember that Paul and his team, during this time, there was this awful famine in Jerusalem. And there was a lot of believers there that didn't have enough to eat. They didn't have money for the basic necessities. And so Paul was collecting an offering as he went around Asia Minor.

4:40He was collecting an offering for that church in Jerusalem that was suffering so much. And the Corinthians had contributed to that. So it seems as though the false teachers were saying, Look, Paul and his team, they're just taking advantage of you. They just want your money so they can spend it on themselves. And so he's very clear here: We've wronged no one. We've corrupted no one. We've taken advantage of no one. He says here, I love this phrase.

5:08Look at verse 3. I said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. So through thick and thin, no matter what happened, Paul viewed them as family. He believed that they would suffer together in this world and that they would live eternally together in the next. He's not saying this, he says, to condemn them. No, he's speaking boldly out of what? Look at verse 4. Out of great pride in them, because he's filled with comfort, because he's overflowing with joy.

5:50Church, I think when we're slandered, like Paul and his team were here in Corinth, it can be really hard to know what the right thing to do is. Do you turn the other cheek and allow people to say whatever they're going to say about you? Do you speak up and defend yourself? Because at some level, your reputation really does matter, especially to the non-Christians who are in your life, who know that you're a believer, who know that you're trying to follow Christ. Your reputation does matter at some level. Because what they think about you reflects on the God that you serve.

6:28I expect that Paul had to think carefully and pray continually for wisdom on these kinds of issues. And we have to do the same because Jesus clearly taught when others revile us and persecute us and say all kinds of evil against us falsely, what are we? We are blessed. So there are going to be instances where the right call is to turn the other cheek and to let people say what they're going to say. But then Paul says in his letter to Titus that empty talkers and deceivers have to be silenced.

7:00So what this requires is a great amount of wisdom, a great amount of prayer, and I think the whole thing comes down to motives. Are you most concerned about your own reputation, about your own name? Or are you most concerned about God's reputation and the name of the Lord? Comes down to motives. So at the end of verse 4, again, he says that he's filled with comfort and overflowing with joy. Reason for his comfort and joy is Titus's report about how the Corinthians received his last letter.

7:38Now, it's been a minute since we talked about Paul's history with the Corinthian church, and so I think it would be helpful to give you a brief refresher. In late 48 or early 49 AD, Paul traveled to Corinth and planted the church there. He stayed for 18 months, and then he went elsewhere to plant more churches and make more disciples. And at some point, shortly after he left Corinth, he got news that there were some things going on in the church.

8:04And so he wrote a letter to them addressing those issues and particularly addressing the issue of sexual sin. Because remember, this is rampant in the city of Corinth in the first century. And that letter is alluded to in 1 Corinthians 5. He begins that section with, I wrote to you not to associate with sexually immoral people. And so some more time passes, and then some messengers come from Corinth, and they meet Paul, and they talk to him about all of these other issues that have cropped up in the church. They're still dealing with sexual immorality, but now you've got division and all this other stuff. And so he writes the letter that we call 1 Corinthians.

8:41And then Paul returns to Corinth to visit them, to see how they're doing, to instruct them. And the visit doesn't go well at all. Those false teachers that we've been talking about all semester, they had already moved in. They had already begun to teach the Corinthians. They had already begun to set a bad example for them. And they had essentially turned the church against Paul. And not just against Paul, but against Paul's gospel. They were telling these people to turn back to the law of Moses, that the only way to be saved was not through faith in Christ alone, but through faith in Christ plus adherence to the Mosaic law.

9:13And so Paul left very discouraged, and he writes this sorrowful, tearful letter that he's been referring to throughout 2 Corinthians. We've talked about that a bunch. And then he sends Titus back to see how they received that letter. Now, their original plan was for Titus to do that, and then for him to come to Troas, the city north of Ephesus, and meet Paul there. But Titus didn't show up in Troas. And so Paul went to the secondary meeting point, which was in Macedonia, probably Philippi. I mean, life without cell phones. It was hard, right? You just don't know where anybody is. And so I want to pick up in verse 5, where Paul picks up the story. Remember, he left off telling this story way back in chapter 2.

9:54So let's pick up in verse 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. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 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. For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret. It, though I did regret it, for I see that the letter grieved you, though only for a little while. 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.

10:50You may remember when we talked about the narrative earlier this semester that Paul was not in a good place when he got to Macedonia. He had spent three years in the city of Ephesus. The church there exploded. Many disciples were made. So many converts came to faith in Jesus Christ that the city, there was a riot, an uproar, because all these people are turning to faith in Christ. They're burning their magic books. They're getting rid of their idols. It absolutely turned the city upside down. And so anytime God is at work, who else is at work? Satan. And so Paul is seeing all of these great things happen. This riot ensues, and they're driven out of the city. Paul travels north to Troas, remember, because he's going to meet Titus there, and God opens this door for effective ministry, but he's so anxious. He is a real person. Paul is not Jesus 2.0. He is a real person. He is so anxious. He's so distressed over what's happening to Titus and what's going on in Corinth that he can't stay there in spite of the fact that God opened this door for ministry. And so they decide to leave and they go on to Macedonia. And he says right here in the text in verse 5, our bodies had no rest. Literally means they could not sleep. 24-7, they are awake, anxious, praying, thinking, worried about what's going on.

12:10And then you have this in verse 6, these two words, but God. Friends, any time in Scripture, things appear hopeless, we are at the end of our resources, we are at the end of our rope, we have done all that we can do. There is no ability to save ourselves from our sin and its consequences, from the reality of living in this world. You get to this hopeless point, and then you have these words, but God.

12:42But God. What does he do? But God who comforts the downcast. He brings hope to these people in utter despair, and he does it in two ways. First, he does it with the coming of Titus. Paul is so relieved that his friend and his co-laborer in the gospel had not been killed, either on the way to or from Corinth or actually in the city of Corinth. I mean, remember, they have been beaten, they've been stoned, people have tried to kill them already. Second, they were comforted by the report of how the Corinthians received Paul's sorrowful letter. Here's what Titus reports: take a look at the end of verse 7. He reports, Your longing, your mourning, your mourning, Your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.

13:35This for sure is the best possible outcome. Titus is alive and well, and the Corinthians received Paul's letter well. They seem to have repented of their rejection of his ministry and his message. And that's such good news because, as Paul talks about here in verse 8, he initially regretted sending the letter because he knew that it caused them pain and sorrow. He knew that it caused them grief. And haven't we all felt that way before? You've sent that letter, or maybe more, you know, in our modern day, you've hit send on that email, you've hit send on that text message, and then you immediately regret it. What if I made things worse? What if I shouldn't have said anything? What if I should have just let that slide? Am I being too sensitive?

14:31Maybe I made a mistake in doing that. But after Titus's return, Paul can say with confidence that he doesn't regret sending the letter, even if it did upset them initially. And that's not because he took joy in making them feel sad. Look at the middle of verse 9. Why is he happy that he sent the letter? He says in the middle of 9, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.

15:08Church, these verses serve as a powerful reminder that our feelings cannot be the final arbiter of what is true and good. Paul felt bad. He felt regret. That was his initial emotion once he sent the letter. He was concerned that it may have been the wrong thing to do, but ultimately it was the right thing to do because the Corinthians had to be called to repentance, even if it grieved them, even if it made them feel sad for a time, because God used Paul's tough words to grieve them into repenting.

15:49And some of the Corinthians, they clearly felt that it was the right thing to do to reject Paul's ministry and his message. That was how they felt. But they were wrong. It didn't matter how they felt about what they did. And this is why it's so important for all of us to have an objective, unchanging standard in our lives. On any given day, in any given season, our feelings are all over the map. So if our feelings are supposed to be our compass, we're never going to be able to do that. Going to know if we're going the right direction or the wrong direction.

16:35God's Word is an objective and unchanging standard. It is the objective and unchanging standard. It is the compass. It is the perfectly clear lens through which we can evaluate all of our feelings. And so ask yourself this morning: do I trust my feelings without question? Do I assume that as long as I follow my heart, it's never going to lead me astray? Or do I believe that because my sanctification is not yet complete, I may feel wrongly at times? I may need to have my feelings adjusted. Not in the sense of you need to change how you feel because we can't change how we feel, but we can change how we evaluate how we feel and what we do in response to our feelings.

17:29Today, I want you to choose God's Word to be your objective and unchanging standard. I want you to choose that over any other lens through which you could view your feelings. Let's pick up now in verse 10. Paul says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death. Foresee 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. 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. Therefore, we are comforted.

18:40Now, remember, back in verse 9, Paul mentioned that the Corinthians experience godly grief, implying that there is another type of grief, an ungodly form of grief that he calls what? Worldly grief. So, let's begin by considering the nature of what Paul calls godly grief. Look with me at verse 10. Godly grief is characterized as a form of sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. So, when we experience godly grief, what we experience is sorrow over the fact that we have fought things or suffered. Said things or done things that are disobedient and rebellious toward the God who created us and who sustains us and who loves us so much that He gave His only begotten Son for us.

19:43Because that sorrow is godly, it produces what the authors of Scripture call repentance. And repentance is this word metanoia. It means to change your mind, to change direction. It's a complete change of heart and mind that results. Don't miss this, it results in a change of behavior. And that repentance leaves no regret. We aren't just sorry that we got caught. We aren't just sorry that we have to deal with the consequences of our sin. We're not sorry for what may happen to our reputation. Church, that kind of grief is the only grief, Paul says, that leads to salvation.

20:32I want you to consider David's words from Psalm 32, because I think this is a picture of what everyday godly grief looks like in the life of a Christian, in the life of a believer. Look what he writes: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

21:28That is a great example of godly grief. King David is not trying to keep silent about his sin, he's not trying to cover it up. Remember, initially, he did try to cover up his sin with Bathsheba, didn't he? But then he repented of that. He confessed it. He acknowledged it. He went to God for forgiveness, who helped him to change. And here in verse 11, we see the outworking of that godly grief. Look at what Paul says. He says it produced an earnestness, an eagerness to clear themselves of any charge that they don't love or submit to the Apostle Paul and his ministry. It produced what? A righteous indignation toward the false teachers for leading them astray with their teaching and their example.

22:23It produced a reverent fear of God. It produced a zeal to obey. Him and his commands through Paul, and it produced the desire for corrective discipline against these false teachers that Paul calls punishment. You see, friends, if you are experiencing godly grief, it is not going to be a mystery to you or to anyone around you that that is what you are experiencing. Because every time godly grief translates to real life action, it translates to life change, and that's the only kind of grief that leads to salvation.

23:07Now, the other kind of grief, the opposite of godly grief, is what Paul calls worldly grief. And you see here in the text, he doesn't elaborate on what that is, but we can easily fill in the blanks because it's set up as a contrast to godly grief. So, godly grief is sorrow for sin, but worldly grief is sorrow that you got caught, sorrow that you have to go through the consequences, sorrow that your reputation has been soiled.

23:42Godly grief produces repentance, it's a change of heart and mind that leads to real lasting life change. But worldly grief doesn't produce that. Any changes that come from worldly grief, and isn't it true, worldly grief does result in changes usually in the short term? Any changes are short-lived, though, because they're based on the wrong motivation. Godly grief leaves no regret. You're not sad that you changed your heart and your mind and your behavior, but worldly grief does lead to regret. You are sad that you changed your heart and your mind and behavior for a short time. And so it's not a matter of if you will return to your sin, it's just a matter of when you will return to your sin.

24:31Church, we talk about this principle all the time at New Life. What is the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? A Christian is a repentant sinner. All of us are sinners. The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is that Christians are repentant sinners. And I think that's such an important distinction, especially here where we live in the American South. Because the difference oftentimes between a Christian and a non-Christian is not what we say we believe. We often say that we believe the exact same thing. The difference is in how we approach sin in our lives. Christians approach sin the way that King David did. We don't deny it. We don't try to cover it up. No, we acknowledge it. We confess it. We seek to turn away from it. We seek to conform our lives to what God's Word says and what we say we believe.

25:33So, friends, we all experience grief when we sin. The question isn't: do you experience grief? It's what kind of grief do you experience? Is it a godly grief that produces repentance, that leads to salvation and no regrets? Or is it a worldly grief that leads to death? You will know the answer by looking at what your life is producing. If all that your grief produced is a brief period of sadness, a short time of feeling guilty and self-loathing and making empty promises to yourself that you're not going to do that again, God's word tells us to take warning because that kind of grief leads to death.

26:24Let's wrap up now with these final verses here in that last paragraph. We'll pick up in the second half of verse 13. And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 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. And his affection for you. You is even greater as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. I rejoice because I have perfect confidence in you.

27:15In this last paragraph, Paul notes that besides the comfort that they derive from the Corinthians' response to his letter, Paul and his team were further comforted by the way the Corinthians received Titus, their co-worker. After his visit, Titus was filled with joy because his spirit had been refreshed by these people. I mean, think about it. When he's traveling to Corinth, what do you think that he thinks he's in for? These people have rejected, seemingly, Paul's ministry and his message. They've rejected all of them. He's going there thinking, I am in for a long, difficult battle with stubborn people who are digging their heels in and who do not want to change.

27:58But instead, Paul reports that his spirit has been refreshed by you all. And Paul is quick to add that he had told Titus to expect such treatment from them. He had boasted about them to him. And that's because Paul had what he calls in this last verse, perfect confidence in you. Paul has a tremendous amount more faith than I do. If he can say that about these people we've been reading about, that he had perfect confidence in them. But, friends, he had that confidence.

28:31Because he believed that the Word of God and the Spirit of God were powerful enough to change them. When I was studying for the sermon this week, I was reading through some commentaries and I came across this quote from Paul Barnett, and it was one of the most challenging things I've read in the recent past. Take a look at what he wrote: It is a serious mistake to underestimate the impact of the Word of God on those who hear and read it. To all appearances, Paul was checkmated by the Corinthians' repudiation of his painful visit. His ministry there seemed to be at an end, and yet it was not finished. The living God is quite capable of changing apparently intractable attitudes, including ours, by his word and spirit. Ministers of God's word can find encouragement and renewal in their ministries by this example of the changed attitudes of the Corinthians.

29:37If you'll humor me for a moment, I just want to put that quote back on the screen again. I want you to look at these two lines. It is a serious mistake to underestimate the impact of the word of God on those who hear and read it. Take a look at this one one more time. The living God is quite capable of changing. Changing apparently intractable attitudes, including ours, by his word and spirit. Church, how many times have we given up on people because we think that there's no way that they're ever going to change?

30:21How many times have we lost heart over months and years, decades of seeing the same thing? And I think a lot of you know that Pastor Mark Dever at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, he's meant a great deal to me. And I will never forget the challenge that he gave us once to always remember in ministry the four Ps, which he calls prayer, preaching, personal discipling relationships, and patience. When I'm tempted to give up in ministry, I go back to that encouragement. I go back to that encouragement particularly to be patient. The Lord is gracious and merciful. He created and sustains the world by his word. He took on flesh and dwelt among us. He died and rose from the grave. Since all that is true, is there any person that he cannot change? Is there any person that is too far gone?

31:28I want to challenge you this. Morning, not to lose heart and give up. Who are you about to give up on? Who have you already given up on in your life? That family member? That classmate or colleague? Don't stop praying. Don't stop proclaiming the word of God. Don't stop investing in those personal discipling relationships and continue to be patient. Friends, we serve a great and powerful God, and it may very well be the case that after years and years of faithfulness on your part, you may get to rejoice just like Paul got to rejoice over the Corinthians.

32:13It is no exaggeration to say that we are in this text dealing with matters of life and death. And of course, that's true every Sunday, but it's just so clear this morning the difference between godly grief that leads to salvation and life and worldly grief that leads to death. It is there in black and white. And I think that many of us, if not nearly all of us, are familiar with the story of Jesus' crucifixion. But I think in that story, we find the perfect illustration of what we're talking about today.

32:51You see, Jesus had a disciple, one of his closest friends, whose name was Judas. And Sometimes when we think about Judas, you know, we just think that he's this bad guy that was bad from day one and just this awful person. But he was right there with the disciples. He heard all the same teachings. He witnessed all the same miracles. But motivated by sinful greed and probably a host of other reasons as well, he agreed to betray his rabbi, his friend, for 30 pieces of silver.

33:28And after Jesus was condemned to die, he felt guilty about what he had done. And so he went back to those religious leaders who paid him. And he tried to give the money back, and they wouldn't take it. So he threw it on the ground. And he walked out and he hung himself. Worldly grief is what Judas experienced. And worldly grief always leads to death. But we can't forget that the rest of Jesus' disciples denied him also. They sat there at the Last Summer with Jesus, every one of them, and they promised, We will never deny you. We will never forsake you. Peter was the most adamant of them all. He said, Even if everybody else falls away, Jesus, I will never fall away. And Jesus said, Before the rooster crows three times, you will deny me.

34:28Peter denied Jesus. Not just once, but three times. And Luke records that after he denied him that third time, Jesus turned and looked at Peter. And Peter, realizing what he had done, broke down and wept bitterly. See, like Judas, Peter was grieved over what he had done. But what kind of grief was it? It was the kind of grief that decades later, he wrote these words: he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep. Picture Peter thinking of himself. You were straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

35:38My friends, worldly grief, like the kind that Judas experienced, that leads to death. And it leads to death not because we have committed sins that cannot be forgiven. It leads to death because that kind of grief drives us away from the Savior. But godly grief, the kind of grief that Peter experienced, it leads to salvation and eternal life. And it leads to salvation and eternal life, not because we have saved ourselves or earned forgiveness by the way that we have grieved, but because godly grief leads to the Savior. It drives us to the one who lived perfectly, who died sacrificially, and who rose again victorious over sin and death. That's why godly grief saves. That's why godly grief is good grief, because it produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

36:49And so ask yourself this morning: where has my grief led me? Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your word is a true compass. That it shows us, it explains to us the most important truths, like the difference between godly and worldly grief. Father, every one of us at certain points have exhibited a worldly grief. We've been sad because we got caught, we've been sad because we have to deal with the consequences. And there are some here today I know that that's the only kind of grief they've experienced. And so, Lord, my prayer today is that you would grant, through the power of your Spirit, that you would grant us to experience godly grief over our sin.

38:26So that instead of beating ourselves up, instead of self-loathing, instead of these short-lived changes that we promised to ourselves, we would run not to any of those things, but to Christ, the one who can and will save us from our sin and its consequences. God, we pray for salvation today, and we pray that you would help all of us to walk in your truth. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.