Jesus paid the full price for the sins of the whole world 2000 years ago (1John 2:2). It’s a blank check of forgiveness signed in Jesus perfect, eternal blood.
All anyone has to do is take it.
I didn’t even know what “repentance” meant when I received Jesus. All I knew was I needed Jesus and when I asked him to come into my heart he did. I didn’t have to change or clean myself up or show some kind of “repentance.” All I had to do was call out on Jesus “just as I am”.
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10:13). I’ll vouch for that.
But you have to take it. How? Ask for it, right? That's my point. Can I accept your apology, if you don't offer me one? No I cannot.
Repentance doesn’t mean feeling sorry for your sins, nor to promise not to do them anymore.
The issue is more formally the issue of Justice and Righteousness.
Jesus didn’t pay a blank check of forgiveness. Instead, He had all sins in humanity imputed upon Him at the Cross and was Judged for all those sins. From God the Father’s perspective, the Judgment has now been satisfied. Prior to that Judgment, God could not in His Perfect Holiness, accept and forgive all sin.
Now that it has been judged and we have been redeemed, He is now free to forgive our sins upon our facing Him and confessing our sins (recognizing the Gospel message) to Him through faith alone in Christ alone.
The change in repentance is the changing the object of thinking in one’s mind. When we face Him, instead of ourselves, and accept He died for our sins and place them before Him, He is sure and just to forgive us those sins.
You are correct. All anybody needs to do is to accept it through faith in Him.