It can be a great accomplishment for a person to admit, “I have sinned this time.”
But there is a higher level, where a person’s soul-searching moves him to such a degree that he declares, “God is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.”
His remorse reaches back three hundred years, because he understands that his sin does not begin from the present moment, from the present phenomenon – he had to return to the root of the matter.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz