Godly Grief or Wordly Sorrow?

When we sin it is fairly easy to determine if we are experiencing true godly grief or just worldly sorrow because we know our own thoughts.

The real challenge comes when a believer sins and is lovingly disciplined by their church family to direct them toward repentance and restoration.  When the disciplined person expresses sorrow and claims to have repented how can the church best assess whether the person has genuinely repented or is merely experiencing worldly grief?  

The passage I've spent a lot of time studying trying to answer this question is 2 Corinthians 7:5-13.  The Apostle Paul is quite clear when he reveals worldly grief produces death (vs. 9) but godly sorrow produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret (vs. 10).  In the case of the Corinthian church, their godly sorrow led to eagerness to clear themselves by doing what was right.  Sadly, many people stop here because they are simply trying to "clear their name."  The Corinthian believers did not stop there.  They also expressed righteous indignation over their sin, fear of God, zeal, and willingness to expel from their midst the one who had caused them to stumble.

While it's impossible to offer a perfect set of principles for discerning between worldly sorrow and true repentance, here are a couple general guidelines I've pulled out of my study:

(1) What is the person's attitude toward the church's act of discipline? Does the person heartily agree that the church was right to exclude him or her because of the sin, or does the person harbor bitterness and resentment?

(2) Does the person appear to be more upset about how the sin has affected himself or herself (focusing on the pain, shame, or hardship it has brought him or her), or is the person genuinely grieved to have sinned against God, harmed others, wounded the church, and brought Christ's name into disrepute?

Obviously, with the difficulty and sensitively involved in this kind of situation it requires us as church leaders to be godly, patient, humble, prayerful, Bible-soaked men.

An extremely helpful guide, which I relied upon heavily for my study and paraphrased above, comes from the 9Marks: Healthy Church Study Guide series.  It is entitled: Guarding One Another: Church Discipline  - Click HERE for a FREE PDF download of the first chapter.