If you don't repent sincerely, can you be saved if you accept Jesus died for your sins?
If you cheat on your spouse, but your spouse says "I forgive you, be faithful to our marriage and come back home" are you being faithful to the marriage if you dismiss your spouse's feelings and reconciliation by continuing to cheat?
It's a lot more than "you need to repent to be saved" as some kind of quid pro quo, it's not a quid pro quo at all. It is the establishment of reconciliation between two disparate parties: human beings and God. God is the One who does the reconciling, though He is the offended party He is the One who not only initiates, but accomplishes, the act of reconciliation and then restores us to Himself.
Repentance happens here because when I realize what I've done, and just how wrong it is, just how broken I am riddled with guilt, a guilt that I confess. A guilt that I confess and, at the same time, recognize that I'm the problem and that I'm the one who must be fixed, changed, and restored.
Metanoia, the Greek word translated as "repentance", means a change of how one thinks, a reversal of thinking, a change in mindset and behavior. I am guilty and I need forgiveness, I am broken and I need fixing, I am sick and I need healing.
It is therefore an admission and confession of guilt, and our need for that to be addressed, and the only thing that can address the deep wrong we have in ourselves is Jesus, and the mercy of God which is in Jesus for us.
What if your repentance is weak and you don't feel all that bad about the sins?
Then that becomes something we need repentance for. To ask God for contrition, to hear God speak through His word that says, "All have sinned and fallen short" and that these words should penetrate us deep and right into the marrow of our bones--and from out of us comes true penitential grief that we should grasp and hold onto Christ in faith and cling to Him as our only shelter and refuge and healing, our only salvation.
Of course we won't always feel the full weight of our sin, but we should seek that, we should
seek contrition. Pray for remorse, and moreso, pray for the mercy that will rescue and catch us in the ache of our guilt.
Do you only have to repent once at the start, or do you have to keep repenting to maintain salvation.
Cheers
Neither is true.
There is no such thing as only repenting once at the start. No more than when you have a relationship with someone you only just love them at the start. Or as though when you hurt someone you just are "sorry" but that sorry feeling goes away and we just keep hurting them. We hurt someone, and we know we have done that, and there is remorse, and even though the guilt is pardoned by grace--forgiven--we nevertheless recognize how deeply wrong we are and that we are always, constantly, in need of forgiveness, of mercy, of love. I'm sorry, I humbly repent, I admit my wrong, I know I am forgiven and so I don't want to keep being wrong, I want to be restored, and always restored, and in a place of fellowship, of communion,
of friendship.
And it has nothing to do with "maintaining salvation"--again, it's not quid pro quo. Repentance happens, it is simply what it looks like when we are honest with ourselves in the context of who God is.
God loves me,
but I have not loved Him.
God, help me.
God, save me.
I am guilty and full of sin, save me Lord Jesus Christ.
-CryptoLutheran
