Saying sorry doesn’t just mean saying, “Sorry” to the person you’ve hurt and continue on doing the things that hurt them. A meaningful “Sorry” means turning your back against the cause of that hurt, making amends with the people you’ve hurt and changing your life completely with a commitment not to commit the same mistake again.
In the Daily Devotional of the Blackaby’s, they say there are two kinds of sorrow; worldly sorrow and Godly sorrow. To explain these types of sorrow, they used as an example the sorrow felt by Judas when he sold Jesus to the Pharisees for 30 pieces of silver which at that time was the standard price for a slave and the sorrow of Peter when he denied Jesus three times just as Jesus foretold during their last supper.
Judas, in his worldly sorrow that he betrayed his Master, wept bitterly and fled to an abandoned field to hang himself. He did not go back to the other disciples to ask for forgiveness for what he did. His shame and failure ate up his reason for living and drove him to take his own life bringing his sorrow to the grave.
Peter, on the other hand wept bitterly when he denied knowing Jesus to a maidservant and then to two other inquisitive people around the courtyard where Jesus was brought by the men who arrested him. So intense was his sorrow that he sobbed and fled from the throng maybe after Jesus looked at him after a cock crowed. Reminding him that what he vehemently said he won’t do, happened just as He prophesied. But Peter did not take his life, he went back to the other disciples and was with them when Mary Magdalene announced that Jesus was alive. He was sorry and ashamed with his failure but he did not abandon the group. When Jesus asked him thrice to reaffirm his love for Him, saying sorry for Peter meant a complete change of his life and a commitment not to do the same mistake again even if he had to die on a cross too if he will not disown Jesus. Peter did not waver in his commitment not to deny Jesus again, he accepted his death but requested that he be hanged upside down because he felt he was not worthy to die on the cross the same way as His Master.
