DAILY DEVOTIONAL – January 6, 2021
“A Tale of Two Tears”
Prayer: Our Holy God, we dare not stand before You on our own two feet or trust the foundation of shifting sand that our sin has laid beneath us. Our only hope of standing before You on that Final Day when You come to judge the world, is to stand on the firm foundation of what Christ has done for us; to stand on the rock of His empty tomb, putting all of our faith and hope in Your love that gave Your only Son for our salvation. Amen.
Scripture: Psalm 32:1-7
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.
Devotion – “A Tale of Two Tears”
It is hard to believe, but my son Jesse will be turning 2 years old in just under 3 months. My son is all boy. Loud, rough, dirty, constantly eating, destructive, and inquisitive. Now at the age where he is aware of what he wants, and like most near two-year-old children, he is experimenting with his parents’ boundaries and the limits he thinks he can push. Along with this, my son has nearly perfected the ability to make giant, bulbous, crocodile tears flow from his cute little face whenever he thinks it might give him an edge. Isn’t it interesting how early we sinful beings start to blur the line between regret and true remorse?
There is quite a significant difference between regret and remorse.
Regret is most often used as a verb, and it literally means to “re-greet”, to remember, to re-live over and over again. Regret comes from the mind. Regret has more to do with being sorrowful or disappointed with something you have done or haven’t done because of the pain and discomfort it has caused you. The question we always ask when filled with regret is “what if?”
Unlike regret, remorse is only used as a noun. It is the pain within our hearts not because we are suffering the consequences of what we done or left undone, but the pain and discomfort in our conscience because we know we have done something wrong. Remorse is a person’s moral sense of guilt and grief.
Have you ever wondered why cutting onions makes you cry? When you cut an onion, you break cells, releasing their contents. Enzymes and acids that were kept separate now are free to mix and produce propanethiol S-oxide, a volatile sulfur compound that wafts upward toward your eyes. This gas reacts with the water in your tears to form sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid burns, stimulating your eyes to release more tears to wash the irritant away.
The 17th century British minister, Rev. William Secker, used the cutting of an onion to demonstrate the difference between regret and remorse. He said, “Some have tears enough for their outward losses, but none for their inward lusts; they can mourn for the evil that sin brings, but not for the sin which brings the evil. Pharaoh more lamented the plagues that his sin against God brought upon him, than the hard heart that was within him. Esau mourned not because he sold the birth-right, which was his sin, but because he lost the blessing, which was his punishment. This is like weeping with an onion, the eye sheds tears because it hurts.”
Pharaoh, Esau, or most of us when we cut an onion, those are tears of regret. Tears because what we have done hurts ourselves. Remorse on the other hand is what David is filled with in Psalm 32. At first, I am sure David regretted his sins because of the consequences, but as all regret should, David’s regret brought him to mourn, to be filled with remorse, the healthy and even hopeful acknowledgement of the offense his sin and our sin has brought against the Righteous God who is the author of all that is good, and the judge of all that is evil.
David takes us on his journey from the pain of regret, to the guilt of remorse, and ultimately to the hope of repentance. David said:
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
The only way to live truly free of regret is to repent. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10, “For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death” (NLT).
We can and should always apologize to those we wrong and hurt with our sin, but our hearts and souls will not find everlasting peace and rest until we are reconciled to the One whom we first offend with our sin. As David would later lament in Psalm 51 after committing adultery with Bathsheba, “Against you, God, and you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.”
Redemption and reformation begin with repentance. Though there is certainly a healthy place for remorse and sorrow over our sins and failures, because of God’s free gift of forgiveness and hope given to us in Jesus Christ, we can be set free of regret. By God’s grace through the confidence of faith alone in Christ’s sufficient sacrifice on the cross that paid the price for our sin and satisfied the wrath of God, God now sees us as He sees His perfect Son Jesus, and we can look back even on the darkest parts of our life and find every reason to look forward full of hope and encouragement. It is God’s abounding grace and mercy and His free gift of salvation and forgiveness in Christ that is not only the motivation to change, but His forgiveness is the only strength we have to live in the joy of knowing that Jesus has done everything we cannot do for ourselves.
In His infinite love and mercy, God has not abandoned us because of our past. He has called us to repent, to receive the free gift of His forgiveness in Christ, and be set free from regret to live eternally as the redeemed of God.
Thanks for joining me for another devotional in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
