Are you <i>really</i> sorry?

Sorry, so the song tells us, seems to be the hardest word. But is it really? At one level, ‘sorry’ is not at all hard to say. Turn a corner and bump into someone and the word ‘sorry’ is out of our mouths in an instant. But there is so much more to sorry than that.

You might think we Christians would be good at sorry. We have lots of practice. Saying sorry in the words of a confession is a regular feature of Sunday worship. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer is really big on it – having worshippers declare that they are ‘heartily sorry’. But, despite all that, sorry really is a hard word to say. Because we struggle to say it from the heart.

According to 2 Corinthians 7:11 sorrow can be either godly or worldly. One leads to salvation, the other to death. What Paul has in mind is not feeling sad but feeling sorry. And it suggests getting sorry right is a bigger issue than we might have thought.

Me-centred sorrow

So what is this worldly sorrow? It is the kind of sorrow that is more about me than it is about God. For when I am only sorry because what I have done is getting me into trouble, that’s worldly sorrow. The regret I feel is me-centred. I am sorry my marriage has been damaged by harsh words; sorry my evening out with friends was ruined by my moodiness. Or, in the case of 2 Corinthians 7, sorry that I’ve made the apostle Paul cross. That kind of sorrow is skin deep. And any desire to put things right is simply about making things better for me – I want to get out of trouble; I want everyone happy with me again. God hasn’t entered the frame – at least not beyond lip service. None of this sorrow is really directed to Him.

Godly sorrow

Godly sorrow is different. Here what troubles us is the way we have treated God. In godly sorrow we are upset, not because we have let ourselves down, or even let others down, but because we have dishonoured our God. The one we want to put first and most want to honour was, at the very least, forgotten and, more likely, affronted by our unfaithful pursuit of other gods. Something else took first place in our hearts and, as God tells us in Isaiah 42:8, he will not yield His glory to another. In godly sorrow these things matter to us. They are, in the words of the General Confession, ‘grievous unto us. The burden of them is intolerable’. Because we love our God, it pains us to have offended Him.

And it is hard to say sorry like that.

Yet such sorrow is good for us. As 2 Corinthians 7 makes clear, it produces a passionate determination to set things right. Instead of simply being troubled by our own loss, it is the damage we have done to others and the offence we have caused to God that takes centre stage. That makes all the difference. Think how often an apology within a marriage falls flat because the person who’s been sinned against has the distinct sense that all their spouse is trying to do is get out of trouble but doesn’t really accept that what they did was wrong. But once we really see our offence against God and against others, we speak a very different kind of ‘sorry’.

Vertical and horizontal

When God is in His proper place, we repent for Him. And, as always, getting the vertical right gets the horizontal right too. That was why Paul wrote as strongly as he did – because even though it caused upset in Corinth, it also led to repentance and to things being set right. (2 Cor. 7:8-9). The believers set right both their relationship with God and their relationship with Paul.

In ministry or counselling conversations we do often find ourselves speaking with people who are feeling sorry about things they have done. And, understandably, we are tempted to rush to the gospel. But before holding out that glorious comfort – with all its promises of full forgiveness and rich restoration – we may need to help a person feel properly sorry. A good first step may be to work out who they are really feeling sorry for. It may not be easy – because sorry really is a hard word to say – but it will be good – because a proper sorry is one of the very best of words to say.