Even the penitence of the Prophets, and of all those who lived before Christ, did not achieve the removal of guilt on its own strength: here, too, the forgiveness of guilt was due to the redeeming sacrifice of Christ.

Contrition contributes to a deeper change of heart

Yet, while penitence as such is incapable of actually securing absolution from sin, it does possess (as we have seen) an objective efficacy for inward change, which is specific to it and which has no substitute. Subjectively, however—concerning the penitent’s own state of consciousness, that is to say—he must be dominated by the feeling that without the abolition of his guilt even his change of heart as such would lack reality, and that all his desire for becoming another man would remain ineffectual unless his guilt be taken away first by the blood of Christ. It should be clearly understood that it is precisely this subjective consciousness which conditions the objective reality of the change of heart implied in penitence. We encounter here one of those mysterious paradoxes of the spiritual life to which Revelation alone provides us with the key, and to which the eyes of the world will ever remain blind. They are all intimately related to these words of Jesus: “Every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

Contrition involves the yearning for sanctification

True penitence involves, furthermore, a burning desire not only for forgiveness of the guilt of sin but for purification and sanctification, as well as the belief in their accomplishment by the grace of God. The prayer for pardon and for purification, and the resolve never again to separate ourselves from God in the future proceed therefrom. There also exists a passive form of penitence which includes hope for God’s mercy and pardon, but not for purification and sanctification. In his false humility, this kind of penitent considers himself so hopelessly sinful that he dismisses the belief in his emendation as presumptuous. It would seem to him that he can do no better than commend himself, in all his sinfulness, to the mercy of God, and endure all the misery of sin with patience. In its Lutheran version, the dogmatic concept of justification appears to foster such a purely passive repentance. For Luther knows no purification and sanctification but merely a non-imputation of our sins for the sake of Christ. This purely passive repentance—the contrary extreme, as it were, to that other error of considering a good resolution for the future sufficient, and contrition superfluous—generates no resolution to begin a new life in Christ.

Yet, he who is filled with true penitence will not only say to God: “Turn away Thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities,” but continue thus: “Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels. . . . Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit.” The true Christian, though mindful of the fact that left to himself he would fall again and again, also knows that in Baptism he has received from Christ a supernatural principle of holy life, and that through God’s grace he shall—and can—become a new man. He knows that God wills his cooperation in this process of transformation: “He Who hath created thee without thee, will not justify thee without thee” (St. Augustine, Sermo 169.13).