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A Hebraic Thought for the Week There is an important difference between being sorry for sin and actually turning away from it. Many believers know the cycle well. We sin, regret what we have done, ask God for forgiveness, receive His forgiveness—and then sometime later find ourselves doing the same thing again. The problem is not that forgiveness has failed. The problem may be that we have stopped at regret and forgiveness without completing the turn. This is where the Hebrew concept of teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה) becomes so important. Teshuvah comes from the idea of returning. It is more than feeling badly about what we have done. It means recognizing that we are traveling in the wrong direction, turning around, and returning to God and His ways. Paul makes an important distinction in 2 Corinthians 7:10: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” Notice that godly sorrow works repentance. Sorrow itself is not repentance. Godly sorrow can move us toward change, but feeling terrible about what we have done is not the same thing as changing direction. That distinction can help us understand why someone can sincerely regret a sin, sincerely ask God to forgive it, and yet repeatedly fall back into the same behavior. Forgiveness deals with the sin we have committed. Teshuvah addresses the direction in which we are walking. So here is a question worth considering this week: When you ask God to forgive you, are you also asking what needs to change so that you can walk in a different direction? That is where the cycle begins to break.
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