The Regret We’ll Never, No Never, Regret
April 12, 2026
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Discussion Questions
How have you seen a dysfunctional church be a bad witness for Jesus within a community? How have you seen the opposite?
Read the verses from Jesus again in Matthew about traveling over “sea and land” to make converts. Why should this verse give healthy fear?
If you’re willing to share, can you explain times in your life when you’ve experienced both godly grief and worldly grief? What made the situations different?
What “hot stoves” in your life might you be overlooking? Do you feel yourself in a season where you are spiraling closer to Jesus and his church, or spiraling away?
If Jesus paid the debt for your sin, how might your continued grief over your sin actually be a sign of your unbelief in the “it is finished” aspect of the gospel? How might your lack of joy actually be stubbornness and pride? How does the gospel offer something better?
Scripture Reading
2 Corinthians 7:2-16
2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.
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. 6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, 7 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. 8 For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. 9 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 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. 11 For see 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. 12 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. 13 Therefore we are comforted.
And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 14 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. 15 And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. 16 I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.
Pastoring certainly has challenges. It also has many blessings. One blessing I’ve mentioned before is that, as a pastor, I often get the chance to live on the backside of Christian forgiveness. What I mean is that there’s plenty of conflict and disappointment and hurt in the local church—some of which I stir up accidentally, some of which I stir up on purpose, and some of which I have nothing directly to do with, but I’m there to help. And in all this conflict and hurt and wounding and grief, what I can say is that living on the backside of Christian forgiveness, meaning having done the hard work of listening and repenting and forgiving, is a really great, a really joyful, place to live. The apostle Paul says exactly this in our passage. Not only that, he shows you the path to the same joy. Let’s pray for the Lord’s help.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
About two years ago, our church celebrated its twentieth-fifth anniversary. It’s a big milestone, and I wanted to preach a big sermon. I wanted the sermon to be anthem-like, a rallying cry of sorts. I had wanted it to be like the famous speech from President Kennedy, where he said that before the end of the decade we would fly a man to the moon and bring him back safely. That speech clarified an agenda for the decade.
Yet as much as I tried to do something similar in that sermon, I couldn’t seem to get clarity about what God had for us as a church in the next decade—or the next twenty-five years. We had just planted a church, and attendance and giving were still down. It wasn’t dire, but it was a matter of concern and prayer.
So, in that sermon, rather than a dramatic rallying cry, I simply invited us to start praying about a question. That question asked what shape would our humility, our generosity, and our risk take in the next twenty-five years? I asked us to start praying about what shape our humility, generosity, and risk would take because I didn’t know.
I still don’t have that fully figured out. But I can say that a few months after that sermon, things started to change. Somewhere around Advent and Christmas of that year, people started to show up. And we’ve grown by a hundred in the last 15 months. Perhaps you’re part of that newness. We’re thankful for you.
Stewarding this growth has thrust before us again the question of what shape our humility, generosity, and risk will take. We’re starting to consider if we should raise money, build a building, and move. And because that will take three or four years, we need to start thinking about how to make room now. Perhaps that looks like a third service. That third service might be on Sunday morning. It might be on Sunday night. It might just be an overflow service in the café or fellowship hall when this fills up.
We aren’t sure of the specifics. Some of these plans excite me. Some of them feel daunting. But when I think of a verse from Jesus, it gives me a pause, a check, and a caution, not to avoid that effort but to think about how and why. Listen to Jesus:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matt. 23:15)
The idea is that you’re doing all this work and all this effort, but there’s something about the type of converts and the type of growth and the type of effort that, instead of bringing blessings and life to the world, it brings more death and more hell.
Jesus’s heart for his church—his heart for the work of salvation on the cross and in his resurrection, and in his pouring out of the Holy Spirit—is that his church would be built and people would indeed travel over sea and land to build his kingdom, but that in all that building of his kingdom, he wants them to actually be building his kingdom, a kingdom of joyful, humble, united people who bring him glory and bring blessings and life to this world, and not death and hell.
This has everything to do with our passage this morning. We’ve been preaching through the letter of 2 Corinthians. We took a break from doing that around Easter, but we’re back now to finish the letter before the summer.
And to get back to the themes and context, here’s what I want you to consider: At the very end of 1 Corinthians, Paul told them he wanted to come visit them and take up an offering. You can read about it in 1 Corinthians 16, the last chapter in that letter. There had been a famine in Jerusalem, and Paul thought it would be an awesome show of unity for the mostly Gentile Christians in Europe to bring a large relief offering to the mostly Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He states that aim clearly in 1 Corinthians 16.
But Paul put all that good ministry and kingdom building on pause. Why?
There were issues with sin, and there were issues in their own relationships. Before Paul wanted to raise money from them, before he wanted to send a man to the moon and back, before he wanted to buy a field and build a bigger church, before he wanted to plant more churches, Paul knew that God didn’t want his people to skip over their sin and skip over relationship challenges. He didn’t want Christians to travel over sea and land to make converts of hell. Paul didn’t want money given under those circumstances.
So, after the letter of 1 Corinthians, he visits them. It does not go well. It’s a painful visit. A small but persuasive faction rebels against Paul. So he leaves. Then, rather than visiting again, he sends a letter with his friend Titus. That letter was a painful letter to write. In the letter, through Titus, Paul calls them back to humility, which brought grief.
Then Paul didn’t see Titus for some time. He tried to find him in the city of Troas, where they were supposed to meet. Paul worries for this church, regretting that he even sent that letter, fearing they had spiraled away from Christ, rather than toward him. Their relationship is like a balloon filling with pressure about to explode.
When we come to 2 Corinthians 7, the balloon explodes—but not with anger and pain. It explodes in joy. Paul’s joy. Titus’s joy. The Corinthian’s joy. I believe the angels in heaven have joy and God has joy. That painful letter, that painful prophetic call to humility, rather than spiraling them away from Christ, spiraled them toward Christ. Paul could not be happier.
And now, after his promise to raise money in 1 Corinthians 16, after the painful visit, after the painful letter, and after 2 Corinthians 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—now that they are right with each other and right with God, having dealt with their sin—chapter 7 is a transition chapter before he comes back to the idea of collecting the offering. Which is the main subject of the next two chapters.
Here’s the point: our tendency, just like that of the early church and all people everywhere, can be to skip over the hard work of repenting of sin and mending relationships to build God’s kingdom. But how can building God’s kingdom skip over the very things that God’s kingdom always addresses? Rather than skipping over them, God’s kingdom provides a real rescue from sin and a real way for people to mend relationships and a real path toward joy.
Truth: Godly grief vs. worldly grief
The central truth of this passage comes from the central verse in the passage, which is v. 10. Almost everything else around this verse is a fleshing out of the real-life illustration of what v. 10 looked like in their context. Because v. 10 is the central verse, we’ll need to talk about it for a while. Look with me at v. 10. Paul writes, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” I’ll read it again. “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
Here Paul speaks of two kinds of grief. There is what he calls godly grief and what he calls worldly grief. They have similarities. They can, at times, look the same. They both have the word grief in them. But, in the end, they lead to very different places.
When it comes to godly grief, Paul means sorrow and remorse and contrition over our sin. Godly grief does include grief. It’s not happy, at first. But it also means grief that has God in the picture, grief that causes you to look up to God for forgiveness and help and healing. It’s a kind of grief that we don’t regret. There’s even a play on words there in the passage. Paul says, “Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.” In other words, godly grief is a kind of regret we won’t regret.
Paul contrasts this with what he calls worldly grief over sin. Perhaps we could use the phrase mere remorse. We know we did something wrong. And we’re sad about it. But that sadness, that remorse, in worldly grief neither leads us to change nor to Christ for forgiveness. Thus it leaves us at odds with others we’ve hurt, including God.
After Paul’s hard visit, after Paul’s hard letter, and after all that time away from each other, Paul wanted more from the Corinthian church than mere remorse. He wanted any initial sadness to explode them into a more joyful place to live: the backside of Christian forgiveness. In other words, if we travel over sea and land and make converts and build buildings and raise money, we need to be people who don’t skip over sin and the relational strife that comes from it. We must move through it with God’s help.
How are you doing with this? It can be so hard. Trust me, when I say I get lots of practice, it’s not easy or even fun because there are so many ways to stay in mere remorse. Think about it like this. Think about the idea of a hot stove. If we touch a hot stove when we are healthy, that pain becomes helpful information. It tells us to pull away, and to do so quickly. That’s what Paul calls godly grief. But worldly grief, or ungodly grief, doesn’t respond that way.
Worldly grief might choose instead to numb the pain with alcohol, porn, or sports gambling. Related to numbing, worldly grief can look like finding a distraction from the pain. It might mean knowing there is a sin issue, and instead of dealing with it, you distract yourself, giving yourself fully to hobbies. Or fully work. Or getting in shape. Or maybe you throw yourself into your kid’s life in an unhealthy way. Or perhaps you distract your heart with religious activity. I think of a person many, many years ago at a different church, who was deep in sin, and when he would have problems, he’d throw himself into church work, cleaning the building, raking leaves, fixing things that were broken in the very old building, all to distract himself. Or maybe he felt he was atoning for his sin. He’d show people and God how sorry he was by how sad and remorseful he got, how hard he’d punish himself with activities.
Others might take a different approach, saying, “Well, if I’ve sinned this far, I might as well keep going. If I’ve burnt my hand, I might as well burn my arm. My family won’t take me back; my life won’t ever be the same, so I’ll just run further away.”
Other kinds of worldly grief might look like no grief at all, but rather a pride about sin, a self-justifying attempt. This looks like saying, “It’s as hot or bad as everyone says. Plenty of people in the world are fine with this action. God probably just wants me to be happy. And this makes me happy. In fact, this passage is all about comfort, and this action comforts me, so I think I’m good and God is good with it too.” But he’s not. The comfort of God is not the kind of comfort our cultural moment wants, which is merely to be affirmed. God wants something better for us.
These two feelings of grief, godly and worldly grief, while they have some similarities, are actually very different. And not only are they different, but over time, they lead to very different outcomes. One leads to death and hell, and the other to life and heaven.
Think about it like the continental divide in terms of rain. Picture a raindrop that falls on some part of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. If that raindrop falls a few inches to one side of the continental divide, then it will go to a very different place than a raindrop that falls to the other side. In ten years, one raindrop will be in the Atlantic Ocean and the other in the Pacific, which are 3,000 miles apart.
Church, where is your sin leading you? Are you spiraling toward Christ or away from him? Is your grief leading you to forgiveness, or numbing, distracting, justifying, and atoning for your sin on your own? The difference between mere remorse and true repentance may appear small at first, but they lead to different oceans, different eternities.
When another pastor in town who I appreciate was preaching this passage, he used the example of the difference between legitimate debt collection and a scam.[1] If you borrow money, say ten thousand dollars, you should expect people to call you and ask for that back when the loan comes due. That might feel like harassment, but it’s actually not. Now, if you don’t have the money, you’re in trouble. But let’s just say a friend or an older brother (to use the language of Psalm 22), sees your plight and he pays your debt, then that debt is no longer a debt. It’s canceled. You’re good.
This is what happens with Jesus when we turn to him. He forgives our debt by paying it himself by dying in our place. Our sins cost so much more than ten thousand dollars. It cost our older brother, Jesus, his life.
But what happens now, if after that debt has been paid, the company keeps calling you asking for more money? Is that legitimate debt collection? It is not. It’s a scam and harassment. Just the week, Jeff on staff texted the rest of the staff with an email he got. It wasn’t from me, though it pretended to be from me. It was an email made to look like my address, but it wasn’t my address. And anyone who knows me would know that I don’t sound like the way the email did. In case you’re wondering, it went like this:
Hello Jeff, I hope this message finds you well. Please accept my warm greetings and prayers for God’s guidance, wisdom, and grace in all that you do. I have a brief matter I would like to discuss with you at your convenience. Kindly let me know a suitable time when you would be available so we can talk further here. Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards
When I email Jeff, I don’t sound like that. That’s a scam. They want gift cards and money, and it will keep going and never stop. This is not what God does with our debt. With God, sin gets dealt with and relationships get better.
Now, of course, we need to include the caveat about abuse, reconciliation, and trust. Someone may legitimately repent and legitimately be changed, and that doesn’t mean we have to extend trust right away. Rebuilding trust should take time. There are other passages about that nuance. This passage is about seeking forgiveness and extending forgiveness, which should—most of the time—lead to better things.
In fact, this whole passage is one extended illustration of the joy on the backside of Christian forgiveness. It’s meant to encourage us that real change can happen, even when it previously seemed like it was headed to another ocean.
Let me read a bunch of the passage and just see the joy rippling through the verses. Look at the start in vv. 2–4 again.
2 Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. 3 I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4 I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.
In the next section, Paul describes the painful letter, the conflict, and the godly grief that caused them to repent, change, and be in a relationship again. Let me read the result, picking up in v. 13 and reading to the end.
And besides our own comfort, we rejoiced still more at the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. 14 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. 15 And his affection for you is even greater, as he remembers the obedience of you all, how you received him with fear and trembling. 16 I rejoice, because I have complete confidence in you.
We sometimes speak of Christian “joy” as a mystical, unexplainable experience. Sometimes it is. That’s not the case with this passage and often in our lives. When people who love each other but struggle to get along because of sin now get along because of godly grief, a restored relationship, then joy comes in the morning. Godly grief, while it lasted an hour, leads to an ocean of joy with God and one another.
Following the Easter season, perhaps the best example of these two oceans is Peter and Judas. Both men denied their friend and savior in brutal betrayals. Peter did it three times when asked if he even knew Jesus. He said no, even saying something like, “God will curse me if I’m lying.” Judas, of course, betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
After their betrayals, both men had significant grief, significant sorrow. But there was a key difference: Peter had godly grief and Judas had worldly grief. Peter was restored by Jesus and Judas took his life. Peter became a leader in the early church, traveling over sea and land to make converts for Jesus. Judas did not.
Jesus once said, “The thief [meaning Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10) We see this difference in Peter and Judas, we see this in godly grief and worldly grief. Who will you be? Who will we be?
As I said, in the next two weeks, having looked at their sin and repented of their sin, and restored their relationships, there is so much joy here for Paul and these Christians! They can be in the same room without worrying. They can sit on the same side of the church sanctuary without worrying. They can come to the same service. They don’t have to look to see if a person leaves the back door, so they go out the front door. They did the hard work of moving through godly grief to God. And there is so much joy on the backside of Christian forgiveness for them—and for us. And now, Paul is going to return to the topic he started at least a year before: taking up an offering. We’ll talk about that for a few weeks.
But, again, what about us? I’d like to see our humility, our generosity, and our risk lead us to keep growing. I’d like to see it lead us to plant churches. I’d like to see us raise money, build another building, and move. I’d like to see the best parts of the book of Acts happen here, and see many more be added to the Lord’s number.
But more than that, I’d like to see us be healthy and happy and holy. And that will only happen if we continue to address our sin, continue to become a forgiving, loving community. If we do that, then we are building God’s kingdom, not our own.
What’s one step you can take this week to work on these issues? If there are issues with sin, do you need to tell someone? Do you need help? If the issue is with reconciliation, what step could you take in that direction? Do you need to set up a meeting to take ownership of your part of the problems? Maybe you know of people who are just stuck, and you can move toward them to help. But whatever we do, let’s not delay. The stove is hot.
I’ll invite the music team forward so we can have a time of response through singing. Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
[1] This is from Shad Baker’s sermon at Carlisle Evangelical Free Church. I also drew the idea of the stove from his sermon.
