What tawbah asks for, and what it does not

The formulation usually given, and associated with al-Nawawi, is three things where the wrong is between a person and Allah. Stopping the thing. Regretting it. And resolving not to go back to it. Where somebody else has been wronged, restoring what was taken is added to those. We give that as the standard summary, and the exact wording belongs to a scholar rather than to us.

Now read what is not on that list, because the absence is the whole point.

There is no threshold of distress. Nowhere does it say you must feel bad enough, for long enough, before it counts. There is no number of times you must say it. There is no requirement to feel certain that it was accepted, and no requirement to feel anything in particular at all. Tawbah is an act of the heart and a decision. It is not a performance you can fail on presentation.

The sound material does state a positive form, and it is three words, in Ibn Majah. Regret is repentance. And it states one deadline, and it is not one you are anywhere near: Allah accepts the repentance of His slave so long as the death rattle has not reached his throat.

The verse quoted at you here is the one about those who never knowingly persist in doing wrong. Read the verse after it too, because it is usually left off and it is the answer half: the reward for such people is forgiveness from their Lord. What persisting means in that clause is contested. Ibn Kathir reads it as failing to turn back, rather than as failing to stop for good. That is his reading and it is given here as a reading.

And the resolve not to return is a resolve made at the time. Going back later does not reach backwards and cancel it. That is precisely what the report in Bukhari shows, by having the same servant come back three times and be forgiven three times.