Is it then your contention that those who are indeed reborn from above are incapable of inpenitence or that penitence is no longer necessary for them? Or are you saying that those who are reborn are no longer capable of sin?
Of course we sin...We all sin...However;
Rom 5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
We are not under the law, we are under grace..
.
Rom 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
Thank God for Jesus...
Penitence is a Catholic construct. It has no Scriptural basis.
As one grows in their faith and God reveals more areas in their lives where there is sin, then, yes, they do need to repent of those, but that is not a matter of salvation. Salvation is already a done deal.
Are you not familiar with Romans 7?
Romans 7:1-6 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
Romans 7:13-25 13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
You know, the Pharisees thought the way most Catholics did, that by keeping the Law they were somehow pleasing God and earning salvation.
But they were wrong because God looks on the heart. IN spite of David's sin of adultery and the murder of Uriah, God still called him *a man after God's own heart*.
You know, really, God does not expect perfection out of us. He knows what we're made of and what we have to deal with.
If our heart is right with God, that's what He wants. He doesn't demand the perfection out of us that the Catholic church does.
The Catholic church really needs to learn what the loving heart of God is all about, and it's not about keeping people in bondage to rules and regulations and going to confession and saying the rosary, and doing the sacraments and penance, and holy water and all sorts of other things that it teaches are necessary to earn favor with God.
What a taskmaster Catholics serve.
Read the Bible and learn to know the God of Scripture.