“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). This is not to say that the Christian is to rejoice even in his sin. That is the mark of the world. The world actively seeks out sin in its rebellion against God. It advocates for sin. It loves sin and fights for its right to live the way it wants in opposition to God’s reign. So the Christian does not rejoice in the sin itself. The joy for the Christian is salvation from the power of sin and salvation from God’s judgment of sin.

I must tell you at the beginning that writing on the subject of the paradox of the relationship of sorrow and joy in the life of every Christian has been troubling. Thinking about the sorrow I should feel over my sins has been painful. Why? Because the Bible powerfully teaches that when we confess our sins, that admission must be accompanied by sorrow. When David confessed his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba in his prayer in Psalm 51, he said that the outward sacrifice of a bull or lamb was not enough: “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (vv. 16–17). David was a wealthy man. He could have gone to the temple and offered one hundred bulls as sacrifices. Everyone would have probably marveled at his repentance. But all those sacrifices would have meant nothing unless they were accompanied by genuine sorrow. God would have seen right through his hypocrisy.

That is my dilemma in writing this article. As I look at the sins in my life, remembering thoughts and actions, I have no problem seeing the transgressions. Yet I do not see the appropriate sorrow that God demands. Sorrow, in and of itself, has no power to take away sin. But sorrow does authenticate the genuineness of the confession. Every sinner has had the experience of confessing a sin yet still holding fondly to the sin in his heart. If the sinner is to experience the grace and joy of forgiveness, his confession and repentance must be accompanied by true sorrow. That is where I find myself lacking. As I look back at my individual confession of sin, I see a lack of sorrow. Do I have some kind of sorrow meter? No, but this biblical truth has forced me to seek sorrow all the more.

I don’t believe that I am alone in this lack of sorrow. As we observe the evangelical church in our culture, we see a lack of preaching that confronts sin in the lives of Christians. The subject is avoided. In my own life, I have been blessed to sit under preaching in which the convicting power of the Holy Spirit was so evident that people in the congregation openly wept about their sin or even kneeled and prayed without being told to do so. We need more of such preaching.

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