The Foundation of Discipleship

Repentance is the foundation of discipleship.  The significance of repentance is not the act of seeking forgiveness itself: it is the self-awareness that the act of seeking forgiveness evidences.  If repentance is genuine, it reveals that we are cognizant of ourselves as sinners; deeply flawed people who are unworthy on our own merit to enter God's Kingdom.

Without this self-awareness, every step that comes after; baptism, confession of faith, participation in the means of grace, means absolutely nothing because we do not participate in these acts with an understanding of who we are and who God is.  We remain, perpetually, sinners in need of repentance.  Discipleship and God's covenant community, the Church, must be grounded in an awareness of who we are.

Jesus told the Pharisees (in modern terms, those who were deemed holy) that a tax collector (in modern terms, a crook) who is conscious of himself as a sinner in need of repentance, is further along in his journey towards living as a Pharisee than one who closely follows the law, observes the Sabbath, and spends his life studying the Torah