I cannot tell the difference between God convicting me and my own self hatred. At two in the morning both voices sound exactly the same.

“If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”

This is one of the psalms of ascent, sung by pilgrims climbing the road to Jerusalem, and the writer begins at the bottom of something. He asks a rhetorical question with a terrifying answer: if God kept a ledger, nobody stands. Then he turns it, saying that forgiveness is what produces reverence. Being taken seriously by God and being crushed turn out to be different experiences.

“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

Paul had sent the Corinthians a letter that hurt them, and here he sorts the aftermath into two categories. One kind of sorrow moves a person toward change and leaves no residue of regret; the other simply grinds them down. He is describing something you can test by its direction. Godly grief walks you toward God, and shame walks you away from everyone.