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[Becomer]

Is it truly possible to repent? What is the true definition for it?

To be saved, we must repent. When we say we must repent our sins, we always follow with how it doesn't mean to just feel sorry and ask for forgiveness but it includes that we turn away from it. This is what I always hear from pastors. However, we can't ever truly repent in that sense, can we?

If I lie and ask for forgiveness later and feel truly sorry for the act, but then a week later do something similar again. Then in the definition given by pastors, I didn't truly repent and am not saved.

If I were to watch porn one night and ask for forgiveness and truly feel bad that I gave into the temptation, but then fall again into it later on, then again, I am not saved due to not following the definition preached.

We all repeat sin. We can genuinely feel bad for our actions, but we repeat the sin anyway sometime in the future. We all do.
Is this what is truly meant by repentance? Turning away from sin, to me, sounds like "if you sin, dont do it again. Walk the other way from it." If we do it again, we didn't turn away.

By that definition, it means that in order to be saved, we technically have to be sinless at some final point in our lives, because we should have turned away from it all.

What is the true definition of repenting for your sins in regards to your salvation? "Turning away from it" sounds just as impossible as being perfect.

[jimwalton]

The Greek word translated repentance is *metanoia*. It basically means "to make a turn," generally thought to be 180º: a change of direction. It is used in the sense of a change of the way one thinks, a change of heart, a change of purpose, and of lifestyle. It assumes a radical change in a person's relation to God that also plays itself out in a transformation of how we relate to other human beings.

> To be saved, we must repent. When we say we must repent our sins, we always follow with how it doesn't mean to just feel sorry and ask for forgiveness but it includes that we turn away from it. This is what I always hear from pastors. However, we can't ever truly repent in that sense, can we?

Sure it's possible and has been done billions of times. People, in real life, turn away from all kinds of attitudes and behaviors and make real changes in the way they think and act.

> If I lie and ask for forgiveness later and feel truly sorry for the act, but then a week later do something similar again. Then in the definition given by pastors, I didn't truly repent and am not saved.

You can repent and be sincere about it, but also be weak and do it again. Eventually, though, a person is obliged to figure out why the continued failure and deal with the source rather than just the symptom. That's part of true repentance, too.

> By that definition, it means that in order to be saved, we technically have to be sinless at some final point in our lives, because we should have turned away from it all.

For the person who is seriously seeking God and submitting to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit does a work in their life called sanctification, meaning that in the course of life a person really does change. Though we'll never be perfect, since we still live in a sinful world and our lives are not totally sanctified, many Christians get to the point of living very Christlike lives.

[Becomer]

Thanks. I was definitely just viewing the preaching in the wrong way. A lifestyle change to try to not do something and find the source of a problem, but then still fall into temptation or "slip-up", doesn't imply that all the work done in the other direction is erased.