What if your biggest regrets—about your body, your past, your choices—aren’t meant to haunt you, but to lead you into deeper grace? Sometimes it’s just the problems that come with aging bodies. Maybe it’s a health struggle due to chronic illness. The fact is, some of the issues you face today are due to choices you made in the past. Alcohol, drug use, overeating, and lack of exercise have a cumulative effect on our current health. How should the Christian respond to bad health choices?
God doesn’t punish you with illness or afflict you out of anger (John 9:23). But we live in a fallen world, where we make bad choices and those choices bring about negative consequences. Cells get damaged, organ systems get strained. The result can be sickness, pain, and fatigue. We wish we could go back and make different choices for our current selves, rather than remembering the gospel hope for past mistakes that is offered.
The Idol of Regret
This is an idol I have noticed more in my middle years—the idol of looking back. I see all the mistakes I made and roads not taken. If only I had a been a better parent, not wasted so much time, bought stock in Amazon when it first went public—you name it—then I would be so much better off than I am right now.
Learning from our mistakes is a good thing. Seeing the fruit of our bad choices reminds us of the seriousness of our sin. We should, of course, repent. And through faith and repentance, we receive God’s grace. That should be the end of it, of course. But sometimes it’s hard to let go of the regret and remember there is biblical hope for your past.
Looking back at my mistakes, though, can be just as sinful as pining away for a hope deferred. I’m not putting my hope and happiness with Christ and his grace, but in my own circumstances. Or at least, what I imagine my circumstances could have been. I’m not rejoicing that Christ has forgiven my sins and is working all things for my good and his glory (Romans 8:28). Instead, I’m murmuring about what I should have done differently.
In Philippians 3:12-14, Paul uses the analogy of a runner in a race to describe the Christian life:
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Moving Forward After Bad Health Choices
A runner who is continually looking behind him will not run a good race. In the same way, rehashing all my mistakes and regrets hinders my progress as a Christian. Instead of celebrating Christ’s sacrifice that covers all my sin, I throw a pride-fueled spotlight on the “perfect” life that could have been mine if I had just done better.
Jesus’s instruction to the woman caught in adultery was not: “Please ruminate continually on all your mistakes” but “Go and sin no more.” When Paul highlighted the past unrighteousness of the Corinthian church, he did not say, “Be sure remain paralyzed with regret” but instead pointed to their present and future states:
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)
and later
And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. (1 Corinthians 6:14)
There is gospel hope for past mistakes. Adversity is never wasted. God works it all out for our good, to further conform us to Christ (Romans 8:28). We know that it produces endurance, character, and hope (Romans 5:4) We can come alongside others who live with regret and comfort them (2 Corinthians 1:4).
The tension of living in the “already but the not yet” means that we are completely justified in God’s sight, but the full redemption has not occurred. One day, we’ll let go of these bodies—ravaged by time and scarred by sin—and step into something far better. But until then, we rely on the gospel hope that has been secured for us. We can rest in his grace, and the promise that he is making all things new. Regret doesn’t get the last word. Grace does.
Portions of this post were adapted from a post that originally appeared on Out of the Ordinary.
