In his book, The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink tells the story of Jeff Bosley.[1] When Jeff was 29 years old, he decided to get a tattoo. So he went to a tattoo shop and, with the tattoo artist, opened Microsoft Word and chose the Papyrus font. And for about $100, the artist inked nine black letters on his arm: “No Regrets.”
Statistically, about one out of every five people who get tattoos eventually regret their decision,[2]and Jeff was one of those. Later in life, he discovered that he had plenty of regrets. He regretted not taking college more seriously. He regretted hurting his wife by seeking a divorce. He regretted not pursuing his longtime love of acting. And, of course, he regretted his tattoo.
But he realized something. He said, “I do have regret. [But] it fuels me. Regret sucks, but I like that better than people who say, ‘No regrets’, or ‘I don’t have regrets.’”
This is what Daniel Pink calls “the power of regret.” There is a type of regret that, rather than being a negative thing, can actually make us better. If your regret drives you to make a change in your life—in your attitude, your habits, your desires—it can make you better.
Prodded by his regret, Jeff moved to Southern California and is now making a living as an actor. And taunted by his tattoo, he decided to get it removed. (You can imagine the humor in that.) He said, “Every time I go to the removal place, if it’s a new nurse or technician, I say, ‘I get it.’ The joke is not lost on me.”
You hear it everywhere. There are songs titled “No regrets” sung by artists ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Eminem.[3] Celebrities and even pastors say, “I don’t believe in regrets.”
But I don’t know about you, but like Jeff Bosley, I have plenty of regrets. I regret not going to a different college when I had the chance. I regret the times I’m unkind towards my wife. One of my biggest regrets of the last year is not being more patient with my son. And I regret every day the ways I sin against God.
But the good news for those of us who have regrets is that there is a type of regret that can make you better and, in fact, leads to our salvation. Thousands of years before Jeff Bosley regretted his tattoo and before Daniel Pink wrote his book, the apostle Paul said that if your regret (what he calls “godly grief”) leads to repentance, it brings about salvation without regret (2 Corinthians 7:10).
Two Types of Regret
Paul distinguishes between two different types of regret. The first is godly regret or “godly grief.” And he says that this is the kind of regret the Corinthian church felt when he rebuked them.
The backstory is that there was a man in the church who wronged Paul, and the church should have enacted church discipline against him, but they didn’t. And because they didn’t, Paul wrote a stern letter to the church rebuking them for their failure to act. But because of that letter, the church came to see their wrong. They regretted not standing up for Paul and disciplining the man who wronged him. And their regret led them to repentance. They repented of their inaction and finally disciplined the man as they should have.
That’s godly regret. It’s regret that leads to a real change in your life. Godly regret “produces repentance.” That doesn’t mean we repent perfectly. But it means we make a genuine effort to change and ask for God’s help to do so.
The second type of regret is worldly regret. Worldly regret is like when we regret acting unkindly towards a friend or colleague but, in the end, do nothing about it. We feel a certain amount of remorse, but our regret leaves our minds just as quickly as it came. It doesn't lead to any lasting change in our life.
Two Outcomes
And these two different types of regret lead to two very different outcomes. The result of godly regret is “salvation without regret” (2 Corinthians 7:10).
I still remember a married couple from the first full-time job I had at a church. They were probably in their forties at the time. They had two older kids, and they had been unhappily married for years. Eventually, it came to a head, and they were about to get a divorce, but then they sought marriage counseling, and after a lot of hard work, after their regret led them to make real changes in their relationship, they reconciled. And they decided to have a recommitment ceremony. I remember how special it was to be there when they reaffirmed their vows before friends and family. That was a little over ten years ago, and last month, they celebrated their 32-year anniversary!
That’s the outcome of godly regret. If you repent of your sin before God and those whom you have wronged, it leads to salvation without regret.
Worldly regret, on the other hand, “produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). It’s like when you find yourself falling into the same patterns over and over again. If your regret doesn't lead to change, you dig yourself into a deeper and deeper hole, which only leads to more and more regret. It’s like adding more and more ink to that tattoo, deeper and deeper, bolder and bolder. And when we’re talking about our relationship with God, we’re not just talking about regretting a bad tattoo. We’re talking about eternal regret.
Our Choice
And so we all have a choice. When you take an honest look at your life and see the ways you have wronged others and sinned against God, will you feel only a worldly regret?
Will you live by the mantra, “no regrets”? Or will you acknowledge your regrets and let them propel you to change, to repent before God and others?
A New Tattoo
The problem is that even at its best, our regret is a mixture of worldly and godly regret. Even when we feel regret and strive with all our might to do better, we still continue to struggle with the same sins, oftentimes for our entire life. And for that, we deserve an eternity of death and regret.
The good news is that there is one who has lived and died on our behalf. Jesus is the only one who could truly write on his arm, “no regrets.” Unlike the Corinthian church, who failed to punish the wrongdoer, Jesus does not fail to punish wrong. But because of his love for you, he took the punishment that you deserve.
And because he did, if you turn to him, he will forgive all your regrets. Your small regrets and your biggest, unspeakable regrets—he paid for them all on the cross. And not only that, but through his Word and by the power of his Spirit, he will work in you a godly regret. Instead of “no regrets,” he will tattoo upon your heart a godly regret that leads to salvation without regret.
[1] The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward (New York: Riverhead Books, 2022), 159ff. [2] Ibid., 10. [3] Ibid., 7.
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