What is the difference between penance and repentance?

Instructions for Non-Catholics, a Roman Catholic training book, gives the following instructions concerning penance:

”In the sacrament of penance, God gives the priest the power to bring sinners back into the state of grace and to prevent them from falling into the abyss of hell. Moreover, after confession some temporal punishment due to sin generally remains, and some of this punishment is taken away in the penance (prayers) the priest gives you to say. You should perform other acts of penance also so that you can make up for the temporal punishment due to sin and to avoid a long stay in purgatory. The Church suggests to us these forms of penance: prayer, fasting, giving alms in the name of Christ, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, the patient sufferings of the ills of life, and the gaining of indulgences” (p. 95). (Indulgences are remissions of so many days or months or years of punishment in purgatory.) [1]

The doctrine of penance teaches that what Christ did on the cross was not enough. Is this why the Church of Rome keeps Him on the cross and offers Him up over and over again in the performance of the Mass?Each performance of the Mass and each act of penance as temporal punishment also says that what the Church at Rome is doing is not enough either, else these would cease.

For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with the blood of another – He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Hebrews 9:24 & 25 NKJV

Then He said, ”Behold, I have come to do thy will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified (set apart) through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (set apart). Hebrews 10:9-14 NKJV

The teaching of penance does not liberate souls. Instead, it keeps them in bondage to an end that an individual can never achieve. This is the manmade doctrine of the Pharisees which Christ condemned. This teaching displays a fundamental misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of repentance.

The Biblical position:

“Penance is a wholly different thing from Gospel repentance. Penance is an outward act; repentance is of the heart. Penance is imposed….; repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit. Penance is supposed to make satisfaction for sin. But nothing that the sinner can do or suffer can satisfy the divine justice. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can do that, and He did it once for all when He made atonement on the cross and completely satisfied the divine law. Penance is like that of the heathen religions, seeking to win forgiveness or deliverance from sin by self-inflicted or priest imposed punishment. Such are the tortures of Buddhist and Hindu devotees.

“What God desires in the sinner is not a punishment of oneself for sins, but a change of heart, a real forsaking of sin, shown by a new life of obedience to God’s commands.

“In short, penance is a counterfeit repentance. It is the work of man on his body; true repentance is the work of God in the soul. The divine Word commands: ’Rend your heart, and not your garments’ (Joel 2:13). Penance is ”rending the garments’; an outward form without inward reality, which Christ commands His people not to do” (Dr. Henry M Woods – Our Priceless Heritage, p. 132). [2]

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart – These, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 51:17

How can I change my heart? You can’t……you must be born again.

…let the word of Christ dwell (take up its life) in you richly…

[1] Roman Catholicism by Loraine Boettner – copyright 1962 by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., distributed by Baker Book House – Grand Rapids, Michigan p.254

[2] Ibid., p. 256