89. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SORRY FOR YOUR SIN

Sin is anything you do or don’t do that displeases God, that is contrary to his will or in disobedience to his instructions as given in his Word the Bible. The list is exhaustless and many examples are given in the Bible but it includes gossiping about others, badmouthing them, wishing them evil, enjoying their failures and rejoicing in it, jumping to conclusions presumptously, harbouring envy and jealousy in your heart, hating someone or disliking that person and intensely without a just cause, being proud, vengeful, selfish, cliquish and condescending, resentful of others and their success, being immoral like having sexual relations with someone that you are not married to (fornication), engaging in adultery (having sexual relations with another person’s spouse and/or when you are married), fantasizing about any immoral conduct or otherwise, marrying someone who was not a believer when you are a believer and therefore being unequally yoked, using foul language, cursing others, even in your heart, refusing to share the gospel with others, being lazy about God’s work, being disrespectful to authority be it the government, your spouse, the male leaders in the Church, your parents, your work supervisors or otherwise or any other sin.

As stated before, it is clear that there are many different kinds of sins, some considered weightier than others but God hates all equally.

Sin attracts curses, judgment and death, hence the reason that the Bible tells us clearly, that the wages or the payment for sin is death (Romans 6:23).

Sin is something so awful, that when we commit it, even as people who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we ought to be sorry for it and confess what we have done to God.

As Christians, if we truly love God and want to do what pleases him, we must endeavour to avoid sinning, which we can. At times we will fail though because although we have been redeemed and have God’s holy spirit indwelling us, we still have our sinful flesh nature and at times, we listen to our flesh instead of to God. Thankfully, while we ought not to take it for granted, God has made provision through Jesus Christ, even for when Christians sin aginst him, provided that we are sorry and genuinely repent.

1 John 2: 1-2 states:

• “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

1 John 1: 8-10 tells Christians, who still commit sins from time to time, despite being in relationship with God through the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ his Son:

• “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

To make things right with God where you have messed things up therefore or acted in manner that displeased him or did not do something that he wanted you to do, you must first be sorry for our sin.

To be sorry for your sin means to acknowledge before God in humility, honesty and no guile (deception), that you did wrong, exactly what you did, that you sinned against him first and foremost, that you have no excuse for what you did, that you are deserving of the worst of punishments (God’s righteous judgment), even death. It means to see no one else in your sorrow and to focus on no one else but on you and the awful blackness of your iniquity, you understanding to some measure, the grief you have caused a thrice holy God that hates sin.

It does not mean to make flippant or generic reference to your sin and to say you are sorry wherever you may have sinned and then to quickly move on. It does not mean to make excuses to try to blame somebody else or to seek to justify yourself by explaining why you did it or to focus on the one you wronged and say in deflection, that that person needs to forgive.

When you are truly sorry for your sin (and God knows), you will come to God and repent and he will forgive you of your sins. When you are forgiven of your sins, it is indeed a blessed thing!

David, who was guilty of sins in his life, spoke of how blessed it was not to have the burden of one’s sin over one’s head because God had forgiven.

He stated in Psalm 32:1-6:

• “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.”

Knowing how awful sin is, that you have sinned but that forgiveness is available if you are sorry for it, confess it before God and repent of it my question to you is, are you truly sorry for your sin?

(Written on 31st July, 2026)