2 Corinthians 7:8-11 For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same letter has made you sorry… 1. The text carries us into the heart of a story eighteen hundred years old. The actors in it have long fallen on sleep; but forasmuch as the story has a place in the Bible, it can never die. It is "written for our admonition." St. Paul has heard of a terrible scandal at Corinth. He hears that the Church is scarcely shocked by it. All the feeling is left to him. A man who has been caught up into the third heaven knows what a sin looks like in the vestibule of the Great King; and he has to communicate that aspect of it to the Church. The result we have in this chapter. 2. Luther tells how, while he was still ignorant of the gospel of grace, the word "repentance" was repulsive to him; but when once he had apprehended the revelation of a free forgiveness, all the texts about repentance began to charm and attract him. May it be thus with us. Note — I. THE WORLD'S SORROW. 1. When St. Paul wrote "the world" stood out plainly enough to the Christian. The idea of the word in the Greek is order. As God sent it forth from His creative hand it was a system of exquisite adaptation and workmanship. But when sin entered and death by sin, there sprang up side by side a new organisation, from which God was left out. When Christ came He found this alien world almost co-extensive with the human universe. Out of it He called such as would listen. But still in the first days of the Church the other was the predominant one; and therefore it spoke for itself as to what was meant when St. John said, "Love not the world," or our Lord, "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own." The difficulty began when "the world" itself adopted Christianity for its religion, submitted itself to Christian baptism. But still there is a world, and a very real one, and its characteristic is just what it was — namely, an order and an organism, which leaves God out. It goes in and out amongst the Church, with which it claims to be synonymous. Wherever there is a life lived without God; wherever there is a society organised on the principle of being by itself untrammelled by thought of Him, there is "the world" in this evil sense. 2. The world's sorrow fills a large page of life. (1) For, of course, "the world" is not exempt from misfortune, from wounds in the house of its friends — from death, and death's thousand perils and satellites. But there is something characteristic in the world's way of taking each trouble; there is an astonishment, a resentment, a selfishness, a despair quite peculiar to the sorrow of the "kosmos" which has shut out God. How often has it been seen quite literally that "the world's sorrow" has wrought "death"! How often has suicide itself been the world's way of meeting misfortune! (2) But, considering the context, we may suppose St. Paul to have had specially in his view the world's sorrow for sin. Sin does touch with sorrow even "the world." Sometimes the sin of others touches it; the loose life of a son may deeply wound a father's love as well as a father's pride and a father's confidence. "The world" has to sorrow oftentimes for its own sin; it is often found out by it. There is a sorrow for the loss of character, for the blighting of a career, for the object of a guilty passion, deprived of all that makes life valuable. These are specimens of "the world's" sorrow, which, however, only at last "works death." The "world" being organised on the principle of shutting out God, and death, in its full and final sense, is the final signing and sealing of that exclusion of God. II. "THE SORROW WHICH IS ACCORDING TO GOD." 1. This may mean — (1) God-like — sorrowing for sin as God sorrows for it. Witness the Cross. (2) As God would have it to be — a sorrow which is agreeable to the mind and will of the Holy One. (3) As God works it by the powerful efficiency of His grace. 2. But none of these senses is entirely satisfactory. We would rather read it, "the sorrow which has regard to God," in direct opposition to the world's sorrow, that leaves out of it the thought of God. It would be unreal language to require that sorrow for sin should have no reference whatever to its bearing upon the sinner. God has arranged in mercy and wisdom that motives of fear and self-preservation shall powerfully influence us; but not until God has place in the sinner's sorrow can that sorrow be more than ambiguous as to the sinner's state and the sinner's hope. 3. This Godward sorrow will have in it three ingredients. (1) "Against Thee, Thee, only have I sinned." As the godly-refraining from sin in it the thought, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" so the godly-sorrowing for sin has in it the thought, "Against Thee, O God, yea, in comparison against Thee alone have I sinned."(2) It does not isolate the particular sin; it sees it in its root, and in its connection. "Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me."(3) And thus it recognises a need far graver and more serious than that of forgiveness. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Repentance is not merely sorrow; it is the new mind which views altogether differently from before the two lives of sin and of holiness, and the two objects, self and God. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. |
    |