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I have search this out much over the years, and have seen two extremes, and can appreciate the reasoning behind both, but i believe the truth is in the middle.

I have a brother in Christ who told people that they can be perfect with God no matter what they do wrong, as long as they believe the promise of Jesus to save them as sinners, and that the only repentance in conversion is repenting from unbelief in Christ to save to believing His promise to give sinners eternal life

But which presents Jesus somewhat abstractly simply as as a gift-giver, and misconstrues faith to be just something that believes the promise to give eternal life. (While another church largely fosters faith in the power of their church to save whoever die as one of them).

On the other end are those who require souls to stop sinning and make Jesus their Lord in order to be converted, and to make contrite souls so sin focused (not Christ and grace conscious), no matter how little or rare, and so condemned so that they never or rarely can have assurance that they have eternal life. (Or must trust the self-proclaimed powers of the church to gain them eternal life.)

Another recent (Korean) cultic group teaches that since believers are righteous on Christ, who died for all their sins, then it is a denial of faith to confess sins and ask God to forgive them after conversion. (Thus few outside their elite group are considered saved.)

But what we see in the balanced soteriology of Scripture is not that of repenting from a detailed list of sins in conversion, but a basic turning to the Lord Jesus in faith to save them as damned and destitute sinners, helpless to escape Hell or gain Heaven, and instead trusting in the risen Lord Jesus to save them by His sinless shed blood, (Rm. 3:9-25)

But in which faith is an implicit basic repentance, that of choosing Light over Darkness, in contrast to the lost, (Jn. 3:19-21) as the Christ that was preached was one that loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and who will judge all men and make His enemies, which the lost are, His footstool. And which can be seen in studying Peter’s sermon in Acts 2.

Thus being convicted of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment, (Jn. 16:9) they turned to the Lord Jesus for salvation, and implicitly are also making a basic turn in their hearts from sin to Him, relative to the light they have (important to note).

Thus Paul “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” to lost Felix, (Acts 24:25) and Peter testified to lost Jews, “Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.”(Acts 3:26)

They therefore, having been told to repent and turn to God and appropriated justification by faith, (Rm. 4:1-7ff) they showed forth works which corresponded to repentance, (Acts 26:22) confirmatory of true, complete faith. (Ja 2)

And we ask God to forgive us, for while we are accepted in the Beloved, and positionally righteousness, yet God can have something against us, (Rv. 2:4,14,20) and which we need to set right.

And they were also warned about doing the opposite in denying the faith, by earning salvation or by impenitent willful practicing sin after having received so great salvation. (Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 10:19-39)

And to reiterate, it is not that Christians cannot sin if they are saved, but that their life is characterized by righteousness, and repentance when convicted of not doing so.

Thus,

“Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

This is not in the absolute sense, as if a Christ never can do unrighteousness, or that the lost cannot do good things (such as the pagans did in showing kindness to the survivors in Acts 27), but it speaks in the continuous (doeth, committeth) and overall sense.

Therefore assurance of the salvation of souls is given to those who evidence things which accompany salvation, while “no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” (Eph 5:5-6)

If a believer impenitently, willfully engages in sin, and does not repent when convicted, God will chasten them, so that they can be motivated to repent, so that they will not be condemned with the rest of the world.

And yet we can also struggle with sin that we keep repenting from, “the sin which doth so easily beset us,” (Heb. 12:1) and which repentant response is a testimony to faith (i think Rm. 7 is a post conversion stage of Paul), which is much different from those who are careless about it, but to whom the Scriptures give encouragement to, that we (me) should look to Jesus (focused on Him, not sin), and so “run with patience the race that is set before us.” So may be pray that He will always be our (my) focus, and not even let the politics of the hour give us despair.