Q&A: Sin and Its Punishment
Sin and Its Punishment
Question
Hello Rabbi, it is commonly assumed that repentance erases the sin, but I find that hard to believe. Even if I imagine a world in which a judge could truly know whether the defendant genuinely regrets his actions, would that be enough to atone for his punishment? Or would he still punish him anyway (while of course reducing the sentence)? Sometimes the regret that you know will come after the act is itself the trigger for, or what enables, the act.
Answer
Precisely because of this, they wrote that repentance is beyond the letter of the law; see Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's article on repentance in the name of the Ramchal. In my opinion, though, this is not necessary, because if the regret is genuine, why should the person remain liable to punishment? You are really punishing a different person — namely, the one he was before he repented, when he was still wicked. In my opinion, even human beings, if they saw that there was genuine remorse and were convinced of it, would completely forgo the punishment.
At the margins of my remarks, I would add that it is worth noticing that repentance never actually erases the sin. Repentance out of fear turns intentional sins into inadvertent ones, and repentance out of love turns them into merits. No form of repentance erases them entirely, and that is that.
It is worth reading my article here: