Thus penitence is more than a mere feeling of sorrow.  It results in taking practical steps to amend, so that we make up our minds not to do this or that particular thing again, and to avoid such people or places or situations as we have found by experience to be sources of temptation; and to make a new start in our personal relationship with God.

For our sins do not die of old age, however old they are.  Until we go to God and get rid of them they go on and on stifling the life of the soul, and make a separation between us and him.  We become strangers to him and that state is worsened by each successive act of sin.  As our alienation from him grows, so our powers of resistance to temptation become progressively weakened.  And on God’s side our sins alienate him, because he is too holy and loves us too much to pass them over or pretend that they make no difference.

Repentance alone, that is, true sorrow for one’s sins expressed in a thorough self-examination, a full confession and a sincere determination to turn over a new leaf – that alone can remove the estrangement and make it possible for us to receive God’s forgiveness.

Hence repentance is not the end of Christian discipleship but its first beginning.  And even when discipleship has begun, if it is to continue unbroken, that penitence has to be regularly renewed.

For our soul is either a place of confusion and sin without God, or a temple of peace and purity with him.  It is our repentance and God’s resulting forgiveness which turns the one into the other.