Given. God grants repentance in effectual calling.

Placing it here, after calling, is the argument. Repentance is not the qualification a person brings in order to be accepted; it is one of the first things that happens to someone who has been.

But then God, our Savior, showed us his goodness and deep love for people.

He saved us - not because we did anything to earn it, but because he's merciful. He gave us new life through the Holy Spirit, washing away our old selves and making us new.

Titus 3:4-5

Confession 15.1

That they be renewed through repentance to salvation. The confession says he provided for it in the covenant of grace, knowing it would be needed.

The paragraph opens by granting the case: there is nobody who does good and does not sin, and the best of people may fall into great sins under the power of the corruption still in them and a strong enough temptation. Having granted it, the confession does not treat such a fall as the end. Its proof text is Peter, told before he denies Christ that his faith has been prayed for and that he will turn back.

Simon, Simon, listen - Satan has asked to test all of you, to shake you up like wheat in a sieve.

But I've prayed for you, Simon, so that your trust in me won't fall apart. And when you come back to your senses, help your brothers stay strong too.

Luke 22:31-32

Confession 15.2

Being made aware by the Spirit of the evils of one's sin, and then, by faith in Christ, grieving over it, hating it, praying for pardon and strength, and setting out to live differently.

Note that it runs through faith in Christ rather than alongside it. That is what separates it from remorse: remorse looks at the sin and stops, and this looks at the sin and then at Christ, which is the only reason it can move.

Then I'll pour out a spirit of kindness and prayer on David's family and the people of Jerusalem. They'll look at the one they pierced and mourn for him like you mourn for an only child, grieving deeply as you would for your firstborn.

Zechariah 12:10

Confession 15.3

No. On the confession's account sorrow is one part of it, alongside seeing the sin for what it is, hating it, asking for pardon and for strength, and actually setting out to live differently.

Each part is doing work, and dropping any one of them produces a familiar counterfeit - remorse with no change, resolve with no grief, an apology with no request for help. The confession also puts faith in Christ first in the sequence, which is what keeps the whole thing from becoming an attempt to make up for the sin.

Confession 15.3

The whole course of life - and it is everyone's duty to repent of particular known sins particularly.

The second half is the practical instruction. General acknowledgement that one is a sinner costs nothing. Naming the specific thing is what the confession is asking for.

Confession 15.4

No sin is so small that it does not deserve damnation, and no sin is so great that it will bring damnation on someone who repents.

The sentence is built as a pair and both halves are needed. The first stops anyone treating a small sin as beneath notice; the second stops anyone treating a large one as beyond reach.

Let the wicked drop their ways, and the wrongdoer leave their schemes. Let them turn back to the Lord, who will show mercy, to our God, who is always ready to forgive.

Isaiah 55:7

Confession 15.5