Q:
Is there any chet that teshuvah will not help for?
A:
And the answer is teshuvah helps for everything. But teshuvah will not help, as I said before, to restore what a person lost.
Now sometimes there’s a chet that even teshuvah will not save a man from punishment. Let’s say chillul Hashem; if he profaned Hashem’s name, then teshuvah certainly will help. It helps for Olam Haba. But it doesn’t mean he won’t receive the rewards for the sins that he did. Hakodosh Boruch Hu brings retribution for chillul Hashem despite the teshuvah.
However, there always is some back door, some way out; but it’s not easy. It’s more difficult in those cases where it says teshuvah doesn’t help. You have to do certain things that are very difficult. And therefore it’s equivalent to saying, “You cannot make amends for certain things.”
If people have ruined the lives of others, they can never make up for it. If people ruin their own lives they can never make up for it.
Here’s a man who sat in a yeshiva, he was talking all the time, he never learned; his youth went by and now he has to get married and he can’t learn anymore. He looks back, the opportunity is gone. He cannot become a gadol anymore. He can be a frum Jew, he can become a ben Torah if he learns, but it’s too late to become a gadol. He ruined his opportunity. He wasted his youth.
The same is if a person lives in a wicked way until he’s old and then he repents; Hashem accepts but look at the opportunities he missed. He could have done teshuvah earlier and he could have done so many mitzvos. He could have gained a world of wealth by learning Torah all those years that he wasted in wickedness.
So although it always pays to do teshuvah, but nobody should think that teshuvah will give him an opportunity to do again all the things that he didn’t do when the opportunity was being offered to him.
TAPE # 474 (September 1983)
