Kunmi is fifty-eight years old, a retired civil engineer with a quiet house in Ibadan, a garden he loves and a wife who has been married to him for thirty-eight years. He is an elder in his church. People who meet him describe him as gentle. Very few of them know that almost every day, usually in the late afternoon when the house is still, he watches the same scene play in his mind.
It is 1999. He is reversing his Peugeot 505 out of the compound with two suitcases in the boot. He has taken a contract in Abuja, or that is what he tells everyone. The truth is that there is also a woman there, and he will not live at home again for almost four years. His son Tayo, ten years old and still in his school uniform, runs out of the house and chases the car down the untarred street, shouting, “Daddy, wait! Daddy, wait!” Kunmi sees him in the side mirror. He does not stop.
He came back in 2003. He repented, ended the affair and asked his wife to forgive him. To his astonishment, she did. The marriage was slowly rebuilt, and today it is genuinely good. But Tayo is thirty-seven now, married with two children of his own in Lagos, and the relationship between father and son has never recovered. Tayo is polite. He calls on birthdays. He brings the grandchildren at Christmas. And there is a distance between them that neither of them ever mentions.
Kunmi has confessed that day to God more times than he could count. He has wept over it at vigils. He has read every verse he can find on forgiveness. And still, every afternoon, the boy runs after the car, and Kunmi watches him in the mirror and does not stop.
What Kunmi has never done, in twenty-seven years, is say a single word about it to Tayo.
The memory that will not move
Regret is one of the most painful experiences a human being can carry. It is the ache of looking back at something we did, or failed to do, and wishing with our whole heart that we could go back and change it. Sometimes it concerns sin: a betrayal, a cruelty, a dishonest decision. Sometimes it concerns choices that were simply unwise: the course we studied, the business we invested in, the move we made, the opportunity we declined. And sometimes it concerns what we did not do: the visit we kept postponing until the person died, the words we never said, the child we were too busy to notice.
Regret on its own is not wrong. A person who could look back at real wrongdoing and feel nothing would be in a dangerous spiritual condition. The pain of regret can be a sign of a living conscience. The problem comes when regret becomes a prison: when it keeps a person circling the same memory for years without ever going anywhere. The scene replays. The “if only” repeats. The sorrow is real and deep and endless, but it is also strangely static. It feels like repentance, yet it does not move.
The Gospels show us two men who wept on the same night over the same Lord. Both had failed Him terribly. Judas betrayed Him to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver. Peter denied Him three times by a fire in the high priest’s courtyard. Both men were overwhelmed by what they had done.
Matthew tells us that when Judas saw Jesus condemned, he “repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders” (Matthew 27:3). He confessed: “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). His sorrow was genuine, and he even tried to undo what he had done by returning the money. But he took his sorrow to the wrong place. The priests said, “What is that to us? see thou to that.” And Judas, with nowhere else to take it, went out and ended his life.
Peter’s sorrow looked similar at first. Luke tells us that after the third denial, “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter,” and Peter “went out, and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:61-62). But Peter’s sorrow did not end in the dark. Three days later, the angel at the empty tomb said to the women, “go your way, tell his disciples and Peter” (Mark 16:7). And Peter went. He ran to the tomb. He stayed with the disciples. He jumped out of a boat to reach the risen Lord on the shore. His sorrow moved toward Jesus, and there it found restoration.
I must say something gently here. If regret has brought you to a place where you feel you cannot go on living, please do not carry that alone for another day. Tell someone you trust today: a pastor, a friend, a doctor. Your life is precious to God, and the darkness you feel is not the final truth about you or your future.
Two kinds of sorrow
Paul gives us the clearest teaching in the New Testament on the difference between sorrow that imprisons and sorrow that sets free. He had written a painful letter to the Corinthian church, confronting serious sin in the congregation. After sending it he worried about how they would receive it. Then Titus arrived with news:
For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.
Look at verse 8 first, because it shows us that even Paul knew regret. “I do not repent, though I did repent.” For a while after sending the letter, he regretted it. He wondered whether he had been too harsh. The Greek word here is metamelomai, which carries the sense of regret or remorse, a change of feeling about something done. It is the same word used of Judas in Matthew 27:3.
But in verses 9 and 10 Paul uses a different word. The Corinthians “sorrowed to repentance.” The word is metanoia, a change of mind that leads to a change of direction. Their sorrow did something. It turned them around.
Then comes the great sentence of verse 10: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” There is a wonderful play on words here. Godly sorrow produces a repentance that is not to be regretted, a repentance you will never look back on with remorse. It leaves no residue of regret behind it, because it has gone somewhere and accomplished something.
Worldly sorrow, by contrast, “worketh death.” It is sorrow that stays inside itself. It may be intensely painful. It may produce tears for years. But it does not lead anywhere except deeper into the self. It focuses on what I have lost, on how I look, on the consequences I am suffering, on the person I wish I had been. It circles. And over time it drains life rather than restoring it.
Worldly sorrow can be just as painful as godly sorrow, sometimes more so. The difference lies in direction. Godly sorrow moves toward God, toward the truth and toward the people who were harmed. Worldly sorrow moves around and around the memory.
The difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow is not how much it hurts. It is whether it moves. Godly sorrow faces the wrong, turns to God and seeks repair.
What godly sorrow produces
Paul does not leave us guessing about what godly sorrow looks like in practice. Verse 11 piles up its fruit in the Corinthians, each item introduced with an exclamation. Carefulness means earnestness: they stopped treating the matter lightly. Clearing of yourselves translates apologia, a defence or putting right: they acted so that the wrong no longer stood against them. Indignation was anger at the sin itself. Fear was a healthy reverence before God. Vehement desire was a longing, probably for restored fellowship with Paul. Zeal was energy to do what was right. And revenge means the bringing of justice: they dealt properly with the offender. The result? “In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.” The matter no longer hung over them.
Look at how active that list is. Every item moves. Godly sorrow writes the letter, makes the phone call, returns the money, changes the habit. Worldly sorrow feels terrible and changes nothing.
That was exactly Kunmi’s situation. His sorrow was sincere, and his repentance toward God and toward his wife had been real. But in one direction his sorrow had never moved at all. He had felt it for twenty-seven years without ever turning toward the son who had chased his car.
The heavy hand and the open mouth
David knew both kinds of sorrow. In Psalm 32 he describes what it was like to carry unconfessed sin, and then what happened when he finally spoke:
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 acknowledged 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.
“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.” That is a vivid picture of the prison. David is groaning all day long. He feels physically worn out, his strength dried up like a field in the dry season. And the cause is silence. He kept the thing hidden.
PunchlineNotice the strange combination: silence and roaring at the same time. That is what regret often looks like. Outwardly, life continues. Inwardly, the noise never stops.
Then verse 5 describes the turn: “I acknowledged 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.”
Notice how quickly the forgiveness comes. “I said, I will confess... and thou forgavest.” It is almost as though God was waiting at the door. The moment David resolved to bring the matter into the open, he found mercy. The long years of heaviness ended with a sentence.
For many believers, the confession to God has already happened. Like Kunmi, they have confessed many times. The problem is that they have not believed God’s answer. They keep confessing the same sin as though God had not heard the first time, and each confession becomes another lap around the prison yard. If you have truly brought your sin to God through Christ, then you are forgiven. John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Faithful and just. He does not forgive reluctantly, and He does not need to be asked a thousand times.
But sometimes the silence that keeps us in prison is silence toward a person.
Repair where repair is possible
When Jesus came to Jericho, He invited Himself to the home of a chief tax collector named Zacchaeus, a man who had grown rich by cheating his own people. Something happened at that meal that the crowd outside could hardly believe:
And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Zacchaeus did not merely feel sorry. He stood up and announced what he would do. Half his goods to the poor. Fourfold restoration to anyone he had defrauded. That was far more than the law required. The law of Moses said that a person who had wronged his neighbour “shall recompense his trespass with the principal thereof, and add unto it the fifth part thereof” (Numbers 5:7). Zacchaeus offered four times the amount. His sorrow moved straight toward the people he had harmed.
And Jesus said, “This day is salvation come to this house.” Zacchaeus did not earn salvation by making restitution. Salvation came to him through Jesus, who had come “to seek and to save that which was lost.” But the restitution was the evidence that salvation had arrived. His repentance had gone somewhere.
This is the part of godly sorrow that many of us avoid. We are willing to confess to God, privately, because God is merciful and nobody else needs to know. We are much less willing to face the people we hurt, because that is humbling and the outcome is uncertain. Yet Jesus taught that reconciliation with a brother matters so much that we should leave our gift at the altar to attend to it (Matthew 5:23-24).
What does repair look like? It begins with a specific acknowledgement of what was done, without excuses or explanations. It may include restoring what was taken, as Zacchaeus did. It may include asking how the other person was affected, and then listening without defending yourself. It may include changing something practical so that the harm does not continue.
There are important limits here. Repair must never be forced on someone who does not want it. If the person you harmed has asked not to be contacted, or if contact would cause them further distress or danger, then respecting their wishes is part of your repentance. Never use an apology to demand forgiveness, or to make yourself feel better at their expense. And where the harm involved abuse, a direct approach may be inappropriate; seek wise counsel and let any contact be on the other person’s terms.
Sometimes, too, repair is simply impossible. The person has died. The opportunity has passed. The money cannot be traced. What then?
What cannot be undone
There is a moment in David’s life that is almost unbearable to read. After his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, the prophet Nathan confronted him, and David confessed. Nathan’s answer contained both mercy and consequence: “The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (2 Samuel 12:13). But the child born of that union would die.
David fasted and prayed for seven days, lying on the ground, refusing food. Then the child died, and his servants were afraid to tell him. When he understood, he did something that astonished them:
Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself , and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD , and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat. Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread. And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.
“Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped.” His servants could not understand it. And David explained: while the child lived, there was still something he could do. He could pray. Now there was nothing more to be done. “Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
That is one of the most honest statements in the Bible about the things that cannot be undone. David does not pretend the loss is not real. He does not pretend he can reverse it. He grieves deeply. But he gets up from the ground. He washes. He worships. He eats. He goes on living, and in time he comforts Bathsheba, and she bears another son, Solomon.
Godly sorrow does not pretend yesterday can be undone. That is part of what makes it godly. Worldly sorrow often secretly hopes that if it suffers enough, it can somehow pay for what happened or make it unhappen. It cannot. Nothing can. Only Christ’s sacrifice deals with the guilt of the past, and even His forgiveness does not rewind time. Some consequences remain.
There is a kind of freedom in accepting that. Kunmi cannot give Tayo back the four years between ten and fourteen. He cannot go back and stop the car. Accepting that does not make him callous. It releases him from an impossible task, and points him toward the one that is still possible: being a true father to his son now.
Where repair is genuinely impossible, godly sorrow still moves. It brings the matter to God and receives His forgiveness. It grieves honestly. And often it turns its energy toward others in the same direction. The man who neglected his late father may give himself to caring for elderly members of his church. The woman who once spoke cruelly to a friend who later died may become, for the rest of her life, unusually careful and kind with her words. These things do not undo the past. They let the past teach the present.
Forgetting what is behind
Paul had more reason for regret than most. Before he met Christ, he had hunted down believers, dragged them out of their homes and voted for their deaths. He had stood guarding the coats of the men who stoned Stephen. And yet he could write these words:
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do , forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
“Forgetting those things which are behind.” What does Paul mean? He cannot mean that he literally erased his memory of the past, because in other letters he speaks openly about it. He calls himself “the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). He remembered.
The picture is of a runner in a race. A runner who keeps looking back over his shoulder will lose speed, and he may stumble. Paul is saying that he refuses to let what lies behind slow him down or determine his direction. He does not live facing backwards. He is “reaching forth unto those things which are before,” straining forward like an athlete stretching toward the finishing line.
Notice two other things in this passage. First, Paul is honest about his imperfection: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect.” Forgetting what is behind makes no claim that he has arrived. It is a decision about where to put his energy. Second, notice why he presses on: “that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.” Christ took hold of Paul first. Paul’s whole forward movement is a response to having been seized by grace. He is running toward the One who caught him in the middle of his past.
The prison of regret keeps us facing backwards, replaying the scene in the mirror. Godly sorrow, once it has done its work of confession and repair, turns us around to face forward. The past is still acknowledged. It is simply no longer the direction we are looking.
Living responsibly today
NuggetHow does a person actually walk out of the prison of regret? Let me suggest some steps.
Name the regret precisely. Write it down. Is it about a sin you committed, a mistake you made, or a loss you suffered? These are different, and they need different responses. Sin needs confession and, where possible, repair. A mistake needs honest acknowledgement and the wisdom it can teach. A loss needs grief. Many people stay stuck because they are treating a loss as if it were a sin, punishing themselves for something that was never their fault, or treating a sin as if it were merely a loss, grieving without ever repenting.
If it involves sin, bring it to God and believe His answer. Confess it once, fully and honestly, and then receive the forgiveness He has promised. When the memory returns, as it may, do not confess it all over again as though you had never been forgiven. Thank Him instead that it has been dealt with at the cross.
Ask what repair is still available. Is there someone you need to speak to? Something you need to return? A pattern you need to change? Take one concrete step. It does not have to be the whole journey. It needs to be a step that moves.
Accept what cannot be changed. Grieve it honestly before God, as David did. Then get up from the ground. Ask God to show you how the lessons of the past can serve others in the present.
Live faithfully in the place where you are today. Regret steals the present by keeping your attention on the past. The man who spends every evening replaying his failures as a father may be missing the chance to be a good grandfather. God’s mercies, Jeremiah says, “are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23). Each day is an opportunity for faithfulness that yesterday’s failures cannot cancel.
Remember that God is a restorer. Through the prophet Joel, after a devastating judgement of locusts on the land, God promised His people, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). That promise was given to Israel in a particular situation, and it does not mean every lost thing will return in the same form. But it reveals the heart of a God who delights to bring fruitfulness out of devastation. The years cannot be relived. They can be redeemed.
Some regret is bound up with depression, trauma or obsessive patterns of thought that do not respond to these steps alone. If you find yourself unable to stop replaying a memory, or if your regret is accompanied by persistent hopelessness, please seek help from a qualified counsellor or doctor alongside the support of your church. That help is a gift, and receiving it is part of living responsibly today.
Kunmi wrote the letter on a Tuesday afternoon, at the time of day when the scene usually played. It took him three hours and four drafts. In the end it was one page long.
He did not explain the Abuja contract. He did not mention how hard those years had been for him. He wrote: Tayo, I remember the day I left. I remember you running after the car. I saw you in the mirror, and I did not stop. That was wrong, and it was cruel, and I have never said so to you. I am saying it now. I am sorry. I am not asking you to feel anything in particular about me. I only wanted you to know that I know what I did, and that I would like to be a real father to you for whatever years God gives us. If you ever want to talk about it, I will come to Lagos.
He posted it on Wednesday. For eleven days there was no reply. On the twelfth day his phone rang late at night. It was Tayo. He was quiet for a long time, and then he said, “Daddy, I still remember the car too. I used to wait at the gate every evening.” Kunmi said, “I know. I am so sorry.” They talked for nearly two hours.
It did not fix everything. Tayo said at one point, “I cannot get those years back.” And Kunmi said, “Neither can I. But I can be here now.” The following month he took the bus to Lagos and spent a weekend with his son’s family. He took his grandsons to the beach. He sat up late with Tayo on the balcony, and some of what was said was very hard to hear.
PunchlineHe still thinks about the car sometimes. But the scene does not play every afternoon any more. Something has moved.
If you are carrying a regret that has kept you circling the same memory for years, ask God where your sorrow needs to move. Confess what needs confessing, and believe His forgiveness. Seek repair where repair is possible. Accept what cannot be undone. And then turn around, and face forward, and live faithfully today.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Is there a regret you have been carrying for a long time? Is it about a sin, a mistake or a loss, and have you been responding to it appropriately?
- How does Paul’s distinction between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow in 2 Corinthians 7:10 help you understand your own experience of regret?
- Have you been confessing the same sin to God repeatedly as though He had not forgiven you the first time? What would it mean to believe His answer?
- Is there a person to whom your sorrow needs to move, as Zacchaeus’s sorrow moved toward those he had defrauded? What would one step toward repair look like?
- What in your past cannot be undone? How might David’s response in 2 Samuel 12:20-23 guide you in accepting it and getting up from the ground?
This Week
Set aside an hour this week with a notebook and your Bible. Read 2 Corinthians 7:8-11 and Psalm 32:1-5 slowly. Then write down one regret that has kept you circling. Beneath it, write three headings: “What I need to confess,” “What I can still repair,” and “What I must accept.” Fill in each one honestly. Choose one action from the second list and do it before the end of the week, whether it is a letter, a phone call, a repayment or a changed habit. Then pray through the third list and give it to God.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that Your mercies are new every morning and that Your forgiveness is faithful and just. I bring You the regrets I have carried for so long. Where I have sinned, I confess it, and I receive Your forgiveness through the blood of Jesus. Give me the courage to move toward the people I have hurt, and the wisdom to seek repair without demanding anything from them. Help me to accept what cannot be undone, to grieve it honestly, and to get up from the ground. Turn me around to face forward. Let my sorrow become the kind that leads to life, so that I may live faithfully today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.