NOTES for Dan 9:4-10
Daniel's prayer recorded in the book is a typical example of a prayer of repentance. Above all, it expresses the essential thing without which there is no repentance: the fear of God. Not fear of the punishment one may receive from God for breaking His commandments, but the awareness that something has been done that could destroy one's relationship with Him, destroy it once and for all. This is, in fact, where all repentance begins.
As long as a person is sure that nothing catastrophic has happened, that there is merely a small misunderstanding which can easily be put right by their own efforts, there is no true repentance yet. There is only awareness of certain mistakes which the person can, however, easily correct without turning to God. Yet without turning to God, nothing in spiritual life can be put right. Not because human beings became utterly powerless after the Fall.
Of course, after the Fall human beings are no longer what they were, but they can still do some things. The issue lies elsewhere: in their relationship with God. Sin is terrible not because it is immoral and displeases God. There is much in us that displeases Him, but He does not abandon us for that reason. Sin is terrible because it erects a wall between us and God, separating us from Him.
Only a shared movement and effort by God and the human person towards each other can break down that wall. It must be shared, or nothing will come of it. For human beings are free, and the absence of effort on a person's part can mean only one thing: that person is indifferent to God, is quite content with things as they are and has no intention of breaking down the wall that separates them from Him. In that case, God will not break it down either. He will impose neither His presence nor communion with Himself on the person.
And the second very important point is hope in God's mercy: the mercy inseparable from love which shows itself in God's readiness to do far more than the sinner deserves or has a right to. Only on this condition can a person count on anything. Hoping in one's merits and insisting on one's rights before God is a spiritual dead end. Not even because God's merits are greater in any case, but because such an attitude limits what He can do.
A person is free, and if they agree to receive from God only what they have earned or are entitled to, they will receive exactly what they ask for. There will then be nothing to blame except their own presumption. This is why repentance also means complete trust in God, despite one's own sinfulness. And a readiness to receive from Him an entirely unearned gift: freedom from the power of sin, to which one has succumbed through one's own foolishness and thoughtlessness, or even quite deliberately. And not only this gift, but a still greater one: the fullness of the life of the Kingdom, without which there is no salvation.