Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Disgust
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Language Tone
Analytical
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Confident
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Tentative
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Social Tone
Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Emotional Range
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Tone of specific sentences
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Emotion
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Anger
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8 "For even if I grieved you with my letter, I don’t regret it.
And if I regretted it—since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a while—9 "I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance.
For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us. 10 "For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.
11 "For consider how much diligence this very thing—this grieving as God wills—has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice!
In every way you showed yourselves to be pure in this matter.”
()
He recalls that he once was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man.
This description no longer applies to Paul; it is all past tense.
But as he continues to reflect upon the grace of God, he slips, almost unconsciously it seems, into the present tense of his experience.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1:15).
He is no longer thinking about his past as a persecutor of Christ.
Now he is thinking about his present daily experience as a believer who falls short of the will of God for him.
He doesn’t think about other Christians, whom we know were way behind Paul in their devotion to God and their attainment of godly character.
Paul never wastes time trying to feel good about himself by comparing himself favorably with less mature Christians.
He compares himself with God’s standard, and he consequently sees himself as the worst of sinners.
Through this present sense of his sinfulness Paul sees God’s love for him.
The more he grows in his knowledge of God’s perfect will, the more he sees his own sinfulness, and the more he comprehends God’s love in sending Christ to die for him.
And the more he sees God’s love, the more his heart reaches out in adoring devotion to the One who loved him so.
If God’s love for us is to be a solid foundation stone of devotion, we must realize that His love is entirely of grace,
that it rests completely upon the work of Jesus Christ and flows to us through our union with Him.
Because of this basis His love can never change, regardless of what we do.
In our daily experience, we have all sorts of spiritual ups and downs—
sin, failure, discouragement, all of which tend to make us question God’s love.
That is because we keep thinking that God’s love is somehow conditional.
We are afraid to believe His love is based entirely upon the finished work of Christ for us.
Deep down in our souls we must get hold of the wonderful truth that our spiritual failures do not affect God’s love for us one iota—
that His love for us does not fluctuate according to our experience.
We must be gripped by the truth that we are accepted by God and loved by God for the sole reason that we are united to His beloved Son.
But in v15 Paul alludes here to the deepening consciousness of unworthiness and sinfulness which accompanies all progress towards the knowledge and love of God.
Paul knows that he’s loved by the Lord.
Does this apprehension of God’s personal, unconditional love for us in Christ lead to careless living?
Not at all (let me show you in ).
Actually, such an awareness of His love stimulates in us an increased devotion to Him.
And this devotion is active; it is not just a warm, affectionate feeling toward God.
Paul testified that Christ’s love for us compelled him to live not for himself, but for Him who died for us and rose again ( read it).
How did Paul continue to labor and persevere when it was so hard.
He didn’t quit because of Christ’s love for him.
(Not his love for Christ).
Christ’s love for him.
He loves me” Paul says.
“He died for me”.
And “He rose again that I might live for Him.”
The word for “compel” which Paul used is a very strong verb.
It means to press in on all sides and to impel or force one to a certain course of action.
Probably not many Christians can identify with Paul in this depth of his motivation, but this surely should be our goal.
This is the constraining force God’s love is intended to have upon us.
Because, therefore, a Christian is always looking afresh to Christ and often turning from sin,
it follows that he would often grieve over the presence of this sin.
The Scriptures places side-by-side two kinds of sorrow for sin here in this text.
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (p.
105).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
One that is in v9 “grieved as God willed” and in v10 “worldly grief”.
The passage contrasts the “godly sorrow” as the kind that by God’s grace leads to salvation with
the worldly sorrow that does not result in biblical repentance.
Even unbelievers can grieve over sin, but without it being "grieving as God wills” that is, without it leading to the proper end—
repentance and its fruits.
Still, as those who have experienced the “godly sorrow” that leads to eternal life,
believers can either
grieve over sin as Christians ought, or
improperly as worldlings do.
Godly sorrow is much more than admitting your imperfections.
I’ve never met anyone who considered himself perfect, but relatively few are often
brokenhearted because they know themselves to be
nonstop offenders against the Law of God.
Many professing Christians show no more sorrow for sin on their occasional or heedless and impersonal confessions to God
than a boy forced to say “I’m sorry” to his sister.
As a child of God, should we feel no more deeply about our sin than this?
Godly sorrow for sin does involve sorrow.
Godly sorrow also results in repentance, that is, a change of mind about the sin that produces a change of behavior.
The apostle Paul had written to the Christians in Corinth regarding sin and he later rejoiced in this result:
9 "I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance.
For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us.” ()
Contrast their grief for sin with the kind manifested by Esau, the brother of the Old Testament patriarch Isaac:
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (p.
106).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
17 "For you know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn’t find any opportunity for repentance.”
()
Like Esau, we may weep with regret over our sins and yet have no change of mind and life, no real repentance.
Godly sorrow involves true sorrow, but true sorrow without true repentance is not godly sorrow.
In addition, sorrow for sin that is “in a godly manner” is genuinely humble.
Godly sorrow in the growing Christian makes him a thousand times more aware of his pride than his humility.
It sometimes causes him to wonder how God’s saving grace and such pride could dwell in the same heart.
How did the worst of all sinners see himself ().
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (p.
106).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (p.
107).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (pp.
106–107).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
In the worldly sort of grief for sin, the focus is on self.
Like Esau, it may betray self-pity over what has been lost as a consequence of sin (see ; ).
Whitney, D. S. (2001).
Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (p.
106).
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.
It may reveal self-disappointment over the failure to keep one’s own standards or those of one’s family or church.
Worldly sorrow may even include a self-centered fear of God’s wrath or of hell.
While it’s right to fear these, they may be feared only out of concern for self and
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