Repentance is the activity of reviewing one's action and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs, which is accompanied by commitment to change for the better. Today, 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. But it can also involve sorrow over a specific sin or series of sins that an individual feels he or she has committed.
The practice of repentance plays an important role in the soteriological doctrines of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in which it is often considered necessary for the attainment of salvation. In religious contexts, it often involves an act of confession to God or to a spirit elder (such as a monk or priest). This typically includes an admission of guilt, a promise or resolve not to repeat the offense ;an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.
In Biblical Hebrew, the idea of repentance is represented by two verbs:'shuv'(to return) and nacham (to feel sorrow). In the New Testament, the word translated as 'repentance ' is the Greek word (metanoia) "after /behind one's mind ", which is a compound word of the preposition 'meta '(after, with), and the verb 'noeo '(to perceive, to think, the result of perceiving or observing).
The doctrine of repentance as taught in the Bible is a call to persons to make a radical turn from one way of life to another. The repentance (metanoia) called for throughout and ultimate unconditional surrender to God as Sovereign. It is a call to conversion from self-love, self-trust, and self-assertion to obedient trust and self-commitment to God.