Godly Grief vs. Worldly Grief
July 27
Paul returns to the theme of comfort, and he adds sorrow or grief, depending on your translation. The word means pain, distress; grief, sorrow; cause of grief, trouble, affliction.[1] Another lexicon says the word means “an idiom, literally ‘to be swallowed up by grief’) to be so overcome with grief as to despair—‘to grieve to the point of giving up, to grieve and despair.’ ‘in order that somehow he may not so despair as to give up completely’”.[2]
Obviously, Paul realizes the pain that he may have caused the church at Corinth. However, as sorry as he is that they felt wounded, he wasn’t sorry that he wounded them in his previous letter. He may be referring to his calling out the man who was living in sexual immorality with his father’s wife. In dealing with this man, Paul also called out the church for failing to deal with his sin in a biblical way.
It sounds like Paul is using the modern vernacular, “Sorry. Not sorry,” because he knew the end result was necessary repentance on their part. (2 Corinthians 7:9) He says he rejoices over their repentance.
Paul distinguishes between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation, but worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:10) Basically, the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow is that godly sorrow is being sorry for doing something wrong, while worldly sorrow is being sorry that you got caught. Godly sorrow restores relationships. Worldly sorrow breaks relationships.
Application
When was the last time you grieved for something? You did something wrong. Or you hurt someone. How did it affect other people? How did you attempt to deal with it? How did you attempt to deal with it affect you and other people?
[1] Mounce, William D. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Zondervan, 2006, p. 1203.
[2] Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, Electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., vol. 1, United Bible Societies, 1996, p. 318.