The Big Difference Between Repentance and Regret

It must be understood that there is a difference between repentance and regret.  It's not enough to regert one's sins, one must repent of them.  One of the biggest deceptions today in evangelism is the teaching a regret Gospel rather than a repent Gospel.  I remembered how Pastor Ruben L. Lumagbas Jr. has also made a difference between repentance and regretting.  

Let us use the cookie jar incident to contrast repentance and regret.  In the setting, the cookie jar was never meant for anyone to take because it was the pastor's cookie car.  He had filled it with cookies his wife bought for him.  Just then one of the children was caught by the pastor for stealing cookies from his cookie jar.  Now let us try to see the child's two possible reactions of repentance and regret.

Regret can be defined as a negative emotion where the person can think of his or her mistake all over again.  The child here regrets because the pastor had no choice but to bring the spanking paddle.  The child is requested to bend over and the pastor spanks the child.  The child gets feelings of hatred, depression and anger.  In some cases, a regretting person may even develop suicidal tendencies.  Instead of learning from the mistakes, the child may end up scheming of how to steal cookies from the cookie jar without being caught by the pastor.

On the other hand, repentance is defined as metanoneia or "a change in mind which results to a change in purpose" by the scholar Theophilus.  Repentance of sins means that the person has not only seen himself or herself to be wrong, he or she also realizes that it wasn't about him or her but the offended.  The child here realizes why the pastor spanked his or her buttocks with the paddle.  This one asks for sincere forgiveness or shows at least by action, he or she is truly sorry.  Because he or she is sorry about his or her sins, the fruits are a change in purpose.  The child seeks not to repeat the same mistake and he does not repeat the same sin again as a result of his repentance.