Do you repent by your own actions or by God's forgiveness?

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This is a good question. I can understand your desire to 'balance out' your sins. That is a very natural human inclination - which is why most religions rely on our good works to get us into heaven. What makes Christianity different is that it's not about our good deeds outweighing or balancing out our bad deeds. On the contrary, Christianity is about becoming entirely new creations (2 Cor 5:17) by the power of Christ's death and resurrection - with new hearts, new desires, new loves, and a new power through Christ's Spirit to love the living God and obey Him.

But if we are entirely new creatures why do we still sin? There is an old preacher saying that might help you - "On the cross, Jesus set us free from the penalty of sin and the power of sin, but we are not yet free from the presence of sin." In other words, Jesus cleansed us from guilt and gave us power over sin by the Spirit, but we are still in a battle with sin each day. That is why Galatians 5 depicts the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit.

When we sin as a Christian, it is still God who purifies us - there is nothing we can do to purify ourselves - no good deed can cleanse our conscience or make us right with God. As the following verse shows:

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (NIV)

But the Bible is also clear that when we first become Christians we are like little babies - we still barf on ourselves and mess up a lot. So we need to grow up and overcome sin. Hebrews 5 and 1 John talk about those who are new Christians versus the mature, who can distinguish good from evil and walk in victory over sin. But how do we grow up?

2 Peter 1 is my absolute favorite passage about how to grow up as a Christian - we need to learn about God's Word and how to be a Christian (which is exactly what you are doing), we need to practice what we learn, and we need to recognize it is God's divine power in us that transforms us.

2 Peter 1:3-9

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. (NIV)

Here is another great verse emphasizing that it is God who cleanses us by His Spirit because of His mercy. There is nothing we can do to earn it.

Titus 3:4-7

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

I hope those thoughts are helpful to you in some way and may Christ fill you with His Spirit and the peace that comes from resting in His love and mercy. Blessings on the journey.

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One doesn't "feel repentance", one feels guilt. Except for brief guilt that leads to repentance, guilt is a negative emotion, an unnecessary weight to be avoided.

To repent literally means to change one's mind, so that one thinks differently. This causes a change in one's behaviour and an improvement of one's character. Repentance is a positive action, a necessary goal to be desired.

One cannot "balance out" a sin. The penalty for sin is perpetual death. If you think you are able to "do something", you are overestimating yourself and following your own pride. There is nothing you can do to make up for it. Other than accepting the death penalty, you are incapable of paying for your sins.

But Christianity is all about forgiveness, not blame.

When you can:

  • Look at what you did.
  • Honestly understand how wrong it was.
  • See that you have changed your outlook on life.
  • Know that you will never make that mistake again.
  • Forgive yourself for your former-self's behaviour.

You can know that:

  • God has also forgiven you.
  • God has paid your debt for you.

Repentance requires an actual change in your attitude and behaviour.
That is all that is asked of you.

Upvote:1

Sin is offense against God. Some sins are also offense against others. Sin can be seen as injustice. Sin hurts God and possibly others. It's extremely important to distinguish the two. Forgiveness from God is separate than forgiveness from others. It is also separate than forgiving yourself.

Repentance is more than expressing regret. It has the following elements:

  1. Recognizing that we did wrong (admitting) because we "walked in the wrong path."
  2. Resolving to turn 180 degrees to start walking in the right path.
  3. Willingness to repair the injustice against God
  4. Willingness to repair the injustice against others (if necessary)

Repentance is our subjective experience, but forgiveness is what God does and we don't have to feel it. We only need to know (by faith) that God has forgiven us and to trust God that He will "forget" (i.e. don't count it against us anymore). The injustice against God is erased by Jesus's sacrifice. We do not need to do anything to earn this forgiveness from God once we have done proper repentance. God will no longer judge us because of the sins that we already repent. We can then forgive ourselves based on God's forgiveness.

What you feel maybe the effect of injustice toward others. It is normal to feel that you are responsible to repair the damage. In Catholicism it's called doing penance. Rather than "balancing" to earn God's forgiveness, see it more as an inner motivation to repair our relationship with those we hurt. This feeling is natural, and it's part of the operation of conscience, as well as coming from the wellspring of love in our heart.

It's sometimes not easy to procure other's forgiveness when we sin against them, although it is NOT required to obtain forgiveness from God. It is also normal not to be able to forgive ourselves when we have not obtained their forgiveness. When our sin also affects others, we do need to ask them to forgive us in addition to asking God for forgiveness. Although we may die before they forgive us, as long as God has already forgiven us we will not be judged. Thus our salvation is not conditioned on their forgiveness. But proper repentance needs to include our willingness to seek their forgiveness and our willingness to repair the injustice toward them.

I hope the above sheds some light on the mechanism of repentance and how it links to forgiveness and penance.

To conclude, we repent by our own actions but we know and trust that God does his part to forgive us when we do proper repentance. In addition, when we sin against others, our repentance also need to include 1) seeking forgiveness from those we hurt and 2) our willingness to repair the damage we caused.

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