Should I repent?

Many times someone may wonder if he should get closer to God or if he should change his way of life or his behaviour. People may have these questions. Let’s suppose that we agree that God exists for a minute and that we are not questioning His existence. If this is true, do I need to be closer to Him? Also, do I need to obey any of his rules and if so, why?

Before I begin, I will tell the reader that I have struggled with these questions myself. Thus, I am not judging anyone. In contrast, I believe that it is good to think and question things before you decide whether something is truly the right approach to take. Many priests in the modern world have also told me that they agree with this. I have only asked orthodox priests, so I am not sure if the same applies to priests of other doctrines or not.

And then, we can start wondering: should I be closer to God or should I follow the way of life that He preached about? To start, I will talk about sin and our separation from God. Many people know that humans sinned and they disobeyed God and that this is the reason why we separated from God. We are not as close to Him as we could be. The story about Adam and Eve, which many people nowadays consider symbolic, illustrates this. Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Their disobedience was their sin and for this reason they ended up leaving paradise. Our disobedience towards God, as well as other sins that we may commit, have resulted in the fact that all of us have separated from God. Being a sinner does not mean that you are a bad person. It may not even mean that you had bad intentions, while making the choices that you made in your life. It only means that you made some mistakes.

Nevertheless, God loves us more unconditionally than any human father would. Even the worst of us. Even the ones who have committed the biggest crimes. God still wants to have a relationship with us. He is completely perfect. He is capable of forgiving everything that you do. There is absolutely no limit in what God can forgive and He always accepts you back close to Him, if you repent for your mistake.

Should we repent and follow this God? I don’t know. I personally have received so much disappointment from the imperfect behaviours of people that if I am so moved by how forgiving God is to everyone and how much He loves us. I would like to follow this “person” everywhere, after seeing this behaviour from Him and how much He cared for me. I can say the same thing about the fact that He sent his own son to be sacrificed for us (John 3:16). He sacrificed his son and He even did this simply because he wanted a relationship with us. Imagine how much someone must love you to do that.

When God sent His son to be sacrificed for us, He KNEW that some people would not still repent (Nikodimos Agioritis, 2008); he KNEW that he would not even manage to get the whole humanity to come back to Him. God KNEW that He would die, but still few people would repent. He loves us so much that He sacrificed Himself despite that. God also believes that we are all (each one of us individually) worth having this sacrifice. He did not decide to have this sacrifice because some of the people on this planet were worth it. He did it for each one of us because He believed that each one of us is worth it.

Except for loving us, Christ is also longing for us to repent because He really wanted to have a relationship with us. He feels great pain that we sin and we separate ourselves from Him with our behaviour. He also feels great pain that He has loved us so much, but we have not really behaved as we owed to someone who loves us so much. He has made many sacrifices for us, but we have made few sacrifices for Him and we also keep separating even further from Him many times in our lives.

If someone asked me if we should repent, I would say that we should. We made a mistake by disobeying God and if someone makes a mistake, he owes to other people to try to correct it. God also gives us commands that are actually good for ourselves and other people (I explain in another article why). Thus, we probably should try to obey them, especially when this is the right thing to do towards other people.

I also believe that we should repent due to the love of God and because we love Him too (Loudovikos, 2020). God did so many sacrifices for us and this truly moves me. I only wish I could be more worth for His love and I could also improve, so that I don’t betray Him and His love constantly and I don’t bring Him pain. I believe that I should be a better child and do more things for Him, after what He has done for me. I also do not want Him to be in pain. He definitely deserves better. I find this too unfair and I just wish to improve as much as I can.

Another important thing to realise is that God is the perfect person that we are all looking for. He is the only perfect father who perfectly loves us and will never betray us in anything. He is also everything that we are looking for. No human is perfect because no human is flawless. It is impossible to find a human who will never disappoint us in anything. If you want to experience the perfect love from a perfect person and the only absolute true love, God is the “person” you need to turn to.

To sum up, we owe to God to recognise mistakes that we have made and we can repent for our mistakes and change. We can also repent because God loves us and we have the opportunity to show to Him that we love Him too.

References

Nikodimos Agioritis (2008). Spiritual Exercises. 1st ed. Mount Athos: Synodia Spyridonos Ieromonachou, New Skiti of Mount Athos.

Loudovikos, N. (2020). Repentace is a loving phenomenon. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsAtbDEiLg [Accessed 31 March 2022].