A corollary of the common heresy of proportional atonement is the heresy of proportional repentance. That says that you only have to repent of the bad things about you. But there are many good things about you. You don’t have to repent of them.
I’ve heard people say that because they were only five years old when they became believers in Christ, they didn’t have much sin to repent of. That may be true, relatively speaking, but has anybody noticed how self-centered and self-justifying and self-scheming a five-year-old can be? I’m not surprised people say things like this, because they don’t think it’s sinful to be self-centered and self-justifying. Or at least, not really, really sinful. Not sinful enough to cost somebody’s life.
Interesting point! I wonder though, whether people who argue this just don’t get the picture. The big problem isn’t how many bad things we do. The big problem is that we aren’t on God’s side. That is, until we turn and accept Christ as Lord. The thing is, we need to repent of the fact that we are sinful. Our actual sins – no matter how many or few they are – are simply symptoms of our fallen state.