"The irreligious don't repent at all.  The religious only repent of sins.  But Christians also repent of 'righteousness.'  Moral and religious people are sorry for their sins, but they see sins as simply the failure to live up to standards by which they are saving themselves.  They may go to Jesus for forgiveness, but only as a way to 'cover over the gaps' in their project of self-salvation.  But a Christian is someone who has adopted a whole new system of approach to God.  They realize their entire reason for either irreligion or religion has been essentially the same and essentially wrong!  Christians realize that both their sins and their best deeds have all really ways of avoiding Jesus as Savior.A Christian says: 'though I have often failed to obey the law, the deeper problem is why I was ever trying to obey it!  Even my effort to obey it is just a way of seeking to be my own savior.  In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am really resisting the gospel and setting myself as Savior.'  To get the gospel is to turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus' record for a relationship with God.  'Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet.  Stand in Him, in Him alone, gloriously complete.'"Tim Keller