Remorse is Not Repentance (Feb. 20, 2026)
Judas realized something had gone terribly wrong. When he saw that Jesus had been condemned, Matthew tells us he “changed his mind” and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying:
“I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt 27:4).
It’s a confession, of sorts. It’s grief, of sorts. But Matthew’s word choice reveals something important about what it is not.
The word Matthew uses for Judas’s response is μεταμέλομαι (metamelomai) — a word that means to regret, to feel remorse, to wish things had gone differently. It is not the word μετανοέω (metanoeō), which appears throughout the New Testament for genuine repentance — a turning of the whole self away from sin and toward God. Judas feels the weight of what he has done. He even speaks the truth about Jesus’s innocence. But his grief turns inward rather than outward, toward despair rather than toward the one he has betrayed.
The contrast with Peter is revealing. Peter also fails Jesus terribly in the previous chapter, denying him three times with curses and oaths (26:69–75). Matthew does not use metanoeō for Peter here either. But Peter’s story does not end in a field bought with blood money. Something in Peter reaches outward, toward grace, toward restoration — the path that metanoeō describes.
Lent is a season meant to encourage this kind of self-examination. It doesn’t ask whether we feel guilty about our sins — most of us do, at least at times. It questions whether our sorrow over sin leads us toward God or turns inward on itself. Remorse alone can become a kind of prison, a fixation on our failure that, paradoxically, keeps us focused on ourselves rather than on the one who forgives.
The difference between Judas and Peter is not the severity of their sin but the direction of their sorrow
This is excellent! Thank you for this illuminating emphasis on the difference between remorse and repentance - it speaks directly to a situation and people for whom I am praying.