• This is 2 Cor 7:10 — “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” I find this coming up in conversation lately: people who feel grief for their sin, who feel condemned in it, but not to any purpose or fruitful outcome. The answer to that is usually some form of 2 Cor 7:10— that Satan seeks to use our sin to produce death, but God seeks to produce repentance and life.
• So, I usually speak of the work of the enemy vs. the work of the Spirit. You can discern the difference between the two by their outcomes: the enemy just wants you in a downward spiral of despair, but the Spirit will take you through despair to honest repentance, restoration to God, and freedom and release from sin. Two very, very different outcomes. One unto death, the other unto life.
• So be wary of that “honest” moment when you are seeing some ugliness in yourself face-to-face. Yes, the ugliness may be real, but if all that is happening is a deepening of discouragement and a growing sense of futility and hopelessness, you are most likely being worked on by the enemy. A godly reckoning with sin will take you before a forgiving Father who wants honesty from you, which is the work of the Spirit (Jn 16:8,13), but only in order to restore you to health and the joy of your salvation. Always remember Jn 3:17, “God did not send his son… to condemn.”
• For those concerned about ethics and conduct, it’s only in the freedom of forgiveness that healthy obedience occurs. Works of righteousness are the fruit of restoration, not the source of it. Or say it another way: Christ’s works of righteousness are the source of our own works. We love because he first loved us. And healthy works are just an expression of love.