Our Gemara on Amud Aleph teaches:

שִׁבְעָה דְּבָרִים נִבְרְאוּ קוֹדֶם שֶׁנִּבְרָא הָעוֹלָם, אֵלּוּ הֵן: תּוֹרָה, וּתְשׁוּבָה, גַּן עֵדֶן, וְגֵיהִנָּם, כִּסֵּא הַכָּבוֹד, וּבֵית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ, וּשְׁמוֹ שֶׁל מָשִׁיחַ.

 Seven phenomena were created before the world was created, and they are: Torah, and repentance, the Garden of Eden, and Gehenna, the Throne of Glory, and the Temple, and the name of the Messiah.

What are we to make of this list? How do they connect and why is it significant that they were created before the creation of the world ?

Let’s start with Torah. This is logical as we should assume that Torah is necessary to accomplish the purpose of the creation, whatever it may be. It follows to reason that Gan Eden and Gehenom are part of this system, as they represent reward and punishment, which represents the ultimate imperative to follow the Torah. If the purpose of creation and following the Torah is to recognize and honor Hashem’s existence and our attachment toward Him, then the Throne of Glory, and the Temple, and the name of the Messiah fit into that scheme, as they all represent different phases of recognition and honoring Hashem. The odd one out is Teshuva-Repentance. How is this vital to the mission?

Because it was enacted before creation, it is hard not to conclude that Teshuva is not just a recovery from sin and repair.  If it were merely so, it would not be an Uber creation. In order to understand this, we must understand what are the metaphysics of creation itself and how repentance fits into the plan. When you think about it, obviously God did not really need to create anything at all. There is something compelling that we will never fully understand about His effort to allow existence to happen, which on some level for it to exist, He allowed it to be outside of him and separated from him. There was some kind of pleasure or fulfillment, so to speak in anthropomorphic terms, for God to wait and see if His creations would, of their own free will, voluntarily choose to attach to Him. When you look at it in this light, you come to understand that the world itself and its very creation is a form of sin as it were, because it already represents a distancing from God and His waiting for a return. This is why Teshuva - return is important from the very beginning because it is implicit within the process of creation and its ultimate purpose that matter come back to God. If this is true, sin is not just sin. Sin and repentance are part of allowing creation to learn and discover God and become attached to him. It has to be voluntary by necessity for it to be meaningful, and therefore there has to also be divergence.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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