The Daily Word for an SAT app, which I got for my daughter but I’m using, was the word, PENITENCE.  The definition caught my attention, “Sorrow for sin with a desire to amend and to atone.”  

Honestly, the Bible passage below wasn’t the first thing that came to mind.  Can you believe that the first thought that came to mind was the TV Show, “My Name is Earl?” Jason Lee plays a bad boy who wins $100,000 in the lottery and uses it to make good (atone) for all the wrongs he had done in his life.  If you’ve seen the show, it is “purty darn funny,” but no parallel to the Christian virtue of…penitence.

While in seminary, I was working part-time at a YMCA after-school program for…surprise…3rd and 4th graders.  I remember this bouncing-off-the-wall-sugar-high precocious 8-yr old, whenever called on, would immediately say,”I’m sorry,” and calm down.  Such a good listener!  So, I thought.  Pretty soon, I noticed that every time I called her name, “Brittney!”  Her response was the same.  ”Sorry!”

“What are you sorry about?” I inquired.

“I dunno,” with both palms upraised. 

LOL!  Sometimes, adults do the same.  Look at athletes who apologize, yet they don’t even say sorry.  What’s the word they use instead?  ”I regret that…”  Like the Rihanna‘s Take a Bow song, “Don’t say you’re sorry when you’re not; and baby when I know you’re only sorry you got caught.”

I may be murdering the English language, or splicing it to my convenience, but for the sake of simplicity, but I’ve differentiated three kinds of “I’m sorry” in my life.  

• Regret–”I’m sorry I got caught;  I’m sorry I hurt you.  My bad….”
• Repentance–”I’m truly sorry.  I repent before God and ask for your forgiveness.”
• Penitence–see Matthew 3:8 below (in it’s narrow context of true repentance); see SAT word above.

Can you add other distinctions?  Feel free to comment.   

Matthew 3:1-11

 ¹ In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea ² and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” ³This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:

   “A voice of one calling in the desert, 
‘Prepare the way for the Lord, 
   make straight paths for him.’”

 ⁴ John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. ⁶ Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

 ⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 

⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 

⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

 ¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”