Repentance
activity of reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs
Repentance is reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past or present wrongdoings, which is accompanied by commitment to and actual actions that show and prove a change for the better.
In modern times, it is generally seen as involving a commitment to personal change and the resolve to live a more responsible and humane life. In other words, being sorry for one's misdeeds. It can also involve sorrow over a specific sin or series of sins that an individual feels guilt over, or conviction that they have committed. The practice of repentance plays an important role in the soteriological doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Analogous practices have been found in other world religions as well. In religious contexts, it often involves an act of confession to God or to a spiritual elder (such as a monk or priest). This confession might include an admission of guilt, a promise or intent not to repeat the offense, an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.
Judaism
Repentance (Hebrew: תשובה, literally, "return", pronounced tshuva or teshuva) is one element of atoning for sin in Judaism. Judaism recognizes that everybody sins on occasion, but that people can stop or minimize those occasions in the future by repenting for past transgressions.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Repentance” as activity of reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q497263. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Repentance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.