“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation...” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

This verse is a key verse in understanding what repentance is. Paul revealed that sorrow according to God’s will leads someone towards repentance, which leads someone towards salvation.
It looks like this: SORROW --> REPENTANCE --> SALVATION.

Sadly, what usually takes place in our lives is sorrow, but nothing else. We are sorry when we sin. We feel the guilt that comes with disobeying God, and we feel remorse for our sins. We might even utter a prayer asking for forgiveness when we realize what we’ve done. But none of that is repentance - those things only lead us to repentance.

Repentance can be defined as a change in mind that leads to a change in action. The sorrow is the change in mind, but it must be followed by a change in action in order to be repentance.

John the baptist told the Jewish leaders who came to him to be baptized that they needed to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). In Acts 19:19 the pagan worshippers came together and burned all of their magic books publicly as a display of their repentance. When Paul told King Agrippa about his mission work all over Asia, he told him that he preached, “that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds”(Acts 26:20). The message of repentance in the Bible is not that we should feel sorry for the sins we’ve committed. The message is that the sorrow we feel should change the way that we live moving forward.

So I want to ask a few questions to close this article:
What is the last thing you changed in your life out of repentance?
When is the last time you changed something in your life out of repentance?

Do you allow your sorrow towards God for your sins drive you to change the way you live?

-Kolton Ballance