Imperfection: Loving God with less than your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37, and Mark 12:30). This naturally results in rebellious, destructive behavior.
Repentance: Turning/Thinking Beyond, i.e. changing the focus of your heart and mind from prioritizing yourself, others, and material things back to God, Heaven, His image, His Kingdom, and His Righteousness. This naturally results in obedient, constructive behavior.
Unrepentance: Hoping that imperfect sacrifice, saying sorry, starting "better" deeds, and stopping "worse" deeds will appease God, keep Him at bay, and stop His wrath. This makes it more about us, pushes God further away, and seeks to reduce our need for Him.
Religious people (those who think that what you do defines where you stand before God) have always focused on the physical idea of turning, so if you are engaged in a wrong action or walking in the wrong direction, you just need to turn, stop doing and speaking wrong, start doing and speaking right, and therefore change and become forgiven. However, this is a. easier said than done and b. the total opposite of repentance.
The Old and New Testament never portray repentance as starting in the body, always in the heart and mind. When our choices do not reflect an all-pervading love for God and, therefore, ourselves and others in His image, our choices need to be turned back to Him. The meaning of repentance did not change from Hebrew to Greek. Turning always meant turning of emotional and mental focus, followed by physical habits.
Just don’t try to be good enough for God; you never will be, but He loves you anyway.
If you want to be forgiven and healed, focus on seeking God.
Every other step towards holiness will fall into place one at a time.
