Jesus We Talk About New Year’s Resolutions
Dear Thomas,
Your twentieth question is, “I can understand the idea of a new life, a new beginning, or a fresh start like New Year’s resolutions. But what is different about the Christian’s new life in Christ? Isn’t it just a form of New Year’s resolution by another name?”
No, not at all. New Year’s resolutions are man’s self-help attempt at improvement. We say to ourselves, I want to lose weight. I want to I want to start getting more exercise. I want to stop doing _______________. doing _______________. I want to accomplish _______________. New Year’s resolutions express our awareness of living at less than our potential. By resolve and effort, we think we can become or accomplish whatever we have stated in our resolution.
In one sense, by self-help and self-effort we can make modifications to our lives. We can decide to take a new job or even start a new career.
We can decide to move to a different house or even to a new town in a different state. We can decide to eat well and exercise. We can develop a program that will assist us in accomplishing a goal we have set for ourselves. We can do all of these things as New Year’s resolutions, which can give us a sense of a new start or a new beginning.
Jesus And New Year’s Resolutions
But in Christianity, self-improvement is not what a new life, a new beginning, or a fresh start is all about. It is much different from personal self-improvement, though it may certainly have that effect.
It is much, much more! It is a new form of life. It is a different kind of life. It is not a life that depends on self-effort and resolves, what Christians call the life of the flesh, but a life that is prompted by, initiated by, sponsored by, inspired by, given strength by, and driven by an active Spirit who dwells within us. This is the Spirit, who prompts all people through their consciences to move toward and welcome the relationship with
which is Jesus Christ. It is our free will choosing and thus making active a new relationship with Jesus Christ. This is what Christians call conversion or a new birth. It is a new life in Christ, “Christ in us.” It is an active, real relationship that did not exist prior to this new birth.
It is literally God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, alive and active within us. It is not just a change in environment or activity, though it will certainly affect them. It is a change in the very nature of our being.
Bible Verses About Setting Goals Like Jesus
So how does this happen? What makes any of us choose this new life in Christ, this born-again life? It is God, in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit, who comes to convict our consciences that something is missing in us.
It is the sense that we are somehow incomplete and undone. It is the discovery that something is not quite right, that something more is available to us.
Short of coming into a relationship with the living Christ, many people use the pursuit of false means to resolve the feelings of this incompleteness.
Some of those pursuits involve social, political, or career position, power, and wealth. Others just try to escape by numbing themselves through a variety of means.
But no matter, how. hard we try or what we do, we continue to find ourselves trapped in the effects of this inner sense of incompleteness. All these pursuits and efforts outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ never fulfill us for long.
The resolve to embrace this new life can come only from something or someone other than ourselves, our efforts, and our accomplishments.
If you are a single person, you cannot make yourself into a spouse, and if you have no children, you cannot make yourself into a parent.
Similarly, all the new starts, all the new beginnings, and all the New Year’s resolutions cannot complete the void that exists within us because of our disconnection from our true life source.
We are in need of being recreated by our Creator, God. We are in need of a Savior. We need to start from scratch to be born all over again. We need to start our lives again with someone that heretofore we were not connected to or in a relationship with.
New Year’s Resolutions From A Christian Perspective
So what happens and what changes in our perceptions about ourselves once we make the decision to come into a relationship with Jesus Christ?
I think the biggest reward in this thing called living is this: We realize we do not have to go through life alone. We receive and experience the reality that we belong to God, have been grafted into His family, and are adopted as His children (Rom. 11:23; Eph. 1:5; John 15:1, 5).
John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who received him [Jesus], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God; children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but of born of God.”
John 15:14 says that we are Jesus’ friends, not His servants. Any wrongs of the past we may have committed have been forgiven (Rom. 5:1; 8:1-2; 8:31-34; Col. 1:14). And best of all, we cannot be separated from God’s love for us (Rom. 8:35).
Out of this new sense of belonging, this friendship with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—this Jesus we talk about—comes a change within us.
It doesn’t come from New Year’s resolutions but from beholding, communicating with, relating to, and worshipping Jesus Christ. We become united with Him and one in spirit (1 Cor. 6:17).
We have direct access to God and can approach Him with freedom and confidence (Eph. 2:18; 3:12). We are even declared citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20) and saints (Eph. 1:1).
What Would Jesus Say About New Year’s Resolutions?
All this comes from acknowledging and accepting Jesus, who paid the price necessary for our redemption (1 Cor. 6:20). God has declared it so (John 3:16; Col. 2:10).
The difference all this makes to our lives is that it affects everything to a far greater degree than any number of New Year’s resolutions. It goes to the heart of God’s ultimate desire for us, which is to become people who love. That becoming is a process for sure, but as the apostle Paul reminds us in Philippians 1:6,
In this process, we have not been given a spirit of fear but one of power, love, and a sound mind (2 Tim.1:7). We have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16), and the Holy Spirit works in and through our lives to give us the necessary strength to do all things in accordance with His will (Phil. 4:13).
In the end, we are not just God’s creation but His recreation, His workmanship (Eph. 2:10). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:17-19).
God’s offer of forgiveness, a new life in relationship with Jesus Christ, and His indwelling, active,life-changing Spirit is a free gift. We can say, “No, I don’t want it,” or we can accept it and enjoy it. This free gift is just that— free for the asking, free for the taking. It is never forced on us.
That is the way God’s love works. It is an entirely new life affecting all aspects of our being. It is a life that no longer lives by sheer effort and will as declared in those New Year’s resolutions.
It is a life that has new power by its connection to the ultimate power as revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself gave expression to this living, connecting, life-altering power when He said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (John 5:19-20). He also said, “I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).
Saying that we have a new life in Christ also means that the old life is past. It is history. It is done away with. It is no longer alive. In fact, that is the symbolism of baptism.
Baptism is a declared symbol of death. Just as no one can live without air when we go under the waters of baptism, we symbolically die and no longer have life. Self has died.
Faith-Based New Year’s Resolutions
As we rise out of the water in baptism, we rise symbolically to a new life, a fresh life, a fresh start, a different life, one that is enlivened by the Holy Spirit.
Even though we possess the same earthly body and soul (mind, emotions, and will), something new has taken place within us. As the apostle Paul explains in Romans 8:9-11,
You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature [your old body and soul] but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
But if Christ [through the Spirit of God] is in you, your body [natural born self] is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies [at the resurrection] through his Spirit, who lives in you.
This is a changed life that leads to a new life. It is not an altered life achieved through New Year’s resolutions executed by self-will and self-determined effort.
It is the realization that we can do nothing by ourselves to gain this kind of new life. Within our nature, we don’t have the power.
It is God’s power that is a sustaining power that doesn’t fail like New Year’s resolutions. Again this change, this power is a free gift.
Faith-Based New Year’s Resolutions
It cannot be earned by a life of good works. However, we do have the privilege to say, “Thank you!” We can show our appreciation for this new life in Jesus Christ by choosing to live according to His purpose and desire for us.
And we can have as many new beginnings as we need—not self-imposed, self-determined new resolutions but a new and clean slate along the way.
That is truly much, much more than all that can be accomplished through New Year’s resolutions. And it is all because of and through this Jesus we talk about.
Your friend,
Matt