2 Corinthians 7:10 (KJV) For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world works death.
Question:
How do you know if you are in worldly sorrow towards yourself or others?
Answer:
When you focus on fixing situations, you do not require the person's salvation through repentance.
Explanation:
Sorrow of the world is one of God's true enemies. One that fights against you in your thoughts and your prayers to keep you from hearing and accepting God's will in your life and the life of others. Worldly sorrow works in your heart to deceive you in your perception concerning things of the earth. It works from an earthly perception to pass judgment on what you think the will of God should be on the earth. This sorrow is what seduces you to believe the wrong way about things.
Worldly sorrow binds you to your emotions and causes you to think that the things happening couldn't be the will of God because it doesn't look right or feel right. Because of that, you carry a burden to fix things. It also seduces you to pray the wrong prayers that are not the will of God concerning things on the earth. This kind of sorrow has to be discerned so that we don't continue to be seduced into the wrong perception.
In the Bible, this sorrow is often used as grief, heaviness, or pain, or it can be used as something grievous. Sorrow is a part of your spiritual growth, but there's a difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Godly sorrow looks for repentance so that salvation can come to a person. Worldly sorrow excuses true repentance and generally focuses only on trying to fix someone or something in a given situation.
The thing that is missing when working worldly sorrow in your life or towards others is repentance. You are not looking for a person to change; you're looking for a situation to change. Instant gratification is like eating a sugary dessert that makes you feel great at the moment, but it can't sustain you for long.
In that way of thinking, you're not looking for repentance, a change in how you think; you are just looking to fix a manifestation or situation. Worldly sorrow focuses on the effect and not the direct cause of the distress, which is how you think. It's like continuing to support someone financially who refuses to get a job and help themselves. You empty your bank account, and you are now both poor.
Worldly sorrow is bad for you because you take on the grief and pain of the situation and are seduced to be a savior. Whether it's your salvation, or the salvation of others, to work worldly sorrow will only keep you in a cycle of death. This also means that your deeds will remain as works of the flesh. If someone refuses to repent, your worldly sorrow will not help them; it will only entrap you with a heavy burden. Change happens when people are willing to repent and think differently.
The world doesn't care about cleansing the heart and establishing principles of God that change the nature of people. It focuses only on being a false savior and trying to fix surface situational problems, which are more like bandaids than real healing. We must avoid falling into this way of thinking. No matter how hard it is to watch a person (including yourself) go through a repenting process, we must not yield to the sorrow that works death. We must see it through to the end. The only way to stop the cycle of death (the curse) is to let actual repentance work until you are saved from death.
What to do:
Having sorrow is good for you as long as it is godly sorrow. Godly sorrow focuses on true change, meaning a person needs to be taught the truth, receive it, and begin to practice it in their life. When you require repentance for change, you will not get seduced and caught in a death trap by trying to fix someone that will not repent and do what's right.
An established life is formed by repentance.
Scriptural References:
2 Corinthians 7:10; John 11
What about physical situations?
Because this is such a hot topic, I want to extend this teaching and give my counsel concerning physical examples. Earthly examples can be challenging for everyone. When you're dealing with pain or grief or working with a family member, or a friend, who is in pain and grief, it can be difficult to know where to draw the line on sorrow and how much assistance to give. It's not really about how much sorrow you have as much as what kind of sorrow is in you.
Your approach should be that you can help a person willing to work through the situation and submit to the change that will lead them out of their pain and grief. It becomes a sin for you if you take on their sorrow and begin to help them through emotion and never require repentance or change of heart in their life.
Some situations happen out of our control. One may say, how do I not work worldly sorrow toward a person who lost a close loved one? This pain and grief are different from something they have caused for themselves. My answer is that it works the same. If a person stays in that grief or sorrow without any hope of leaving it, they will perish in it. You cannot go there with them.
The hope for all of us is to deal with these life situations and find God. In that, we will be able to find repentance and change from the sorrow that wants to destroy us. The answer is to desire the sorrow that brings real change to our lives.
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