We often make resolutions at the start of a
New Year. We might resolve to START doing something good that we have always
wanted to do. We might resolve to STOP a bad habit that we have struggled with
for a long time. The point of New Year’s resolutions is to improve ourselves in
the New Year so we are better than we were in the old one.
While our intentions for these resolutions
are good, most of us eventually fail to keep most of them. One researcher said
that the average person keeps the majority of their resolutions for only 21
days. But they only keep one or two resolutions all year. However, the one or
two they keep become permanent changes in their lives.
Resolutions give us the opportunity to let
old things pass away and new things enter into our lives. The Apostle Paul
talks about this in 2 Corinthians
5:17-19:
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a
new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.
Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ, God was
reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them,
and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
This passage has a
lot to say to us about how we can become better in the coming year. Let’s look
at each verse.
Verse 17 - Therefore if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have
come.
When Christians make New Year’s resolutions
they have an advantage over their non-believing friends because Christ helps us
change into a new creation. Actually, in a theological sense, Christians have
already been made new. The sins and mistakes and dumb things we did in the past
have already been washed away by the blood of Christ. Though theologically Christians may already be new in Christ, from a
practical perspective, we still have a lot of growing and changing to do in
order to be new. It is important to realize that when an “old thing” goes away
it creates a vacuum in our lives. A new thing must fill that vacuum or else the
old thing will just come right back. We must learn to replace the negative
aspects of our lives with positive things.
Verse 18 - Now everything is from God, who
reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation.
This verse says everything is from God. In
the context of this passage, it means everything new that replaces the old
is from God. The idea is that Christians are guaranteed God’s help in
overcoming our difficulties and becoming new. We have the Holy Spirit to help
us make and keep our resolutions. But we must pray and ask God for wisdom and
strength. When we pray, we can know that God will hear and respond. God has
promised that every Christian has access to Him through prayer (Romans 5:2).
God always answers our prayers, though sometimes not the way we expected. God
also often responds to the prayers of non-Christians because He is a God of
grace and mercy, He is not obligated to do so. If we want to be better people this year than we were last year, we
should spend some time praying and asking God what good things we should be
doing to replace the negative things we have done in the past. If we pray and
ask God for guidance, we should be prepared to listen and respond when He
answers. We must also remember that God has already
answered our most important prayer, which was for our own salvation. Because of
that, we are now reconciled with God. Reconcile means to reunite those who are
estranged. It means to remove the enmity between them and change from a position
of hostility to a relationship of friendship. Before we became Christians, we
lived in opposition to God, living our lives however we wanted to with no
regard for God’s plans. We were not in a position of friendship with God and
often worked against His plans for our lives. But once we became Christians,
things began to change in our lives. Our perspectives and our priorities
changed. The way we spent our time, our energy and our resources all changed.
Once we became friends of God, we began to work with Him instead of against
Him.
Perhaps one of the greatest things that
changed in our lives was that God gave us a ministry of reconciliation. That
means that God calls us to help others become friends of God as well. Just as
someone told us how we could become the friends of God, we should tell others.
Along with all the other resolutions Christians make, we should resolve to
share our faith regularly with others. Due to differences in our personalities
and life situations, we may all do this in different ways, but we should all be
sharing Jesus in some way as part of our New Year’s resolutions.
Verse 19 - that is, in Christ, God was
reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them,
and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
Notice that as God is working to reconcile
the world to Himself, He does not pay attention to the sins of those He is
trying to reach. We may be tempted to only share with people who we think are
good enough for the Gospel. But that is not what God does. God does not put us
on a scale and then decide who is worth reaching. He reaches out with grace and
mercy to all who believe. The most sinful among us can be reconciled to God if
we turn to Him in faith. Maybe last year was a bad year for our relationship
with God, but this new year can be our best year yet. But we must not take
God’s grace and mercy for granted. One day all of our chances will be used up
and we will stand before God and give an account. At that moment we will either
pass into heaven or be cast into hell and our chance to make resolutions about
change will have passed. But at this moment, we still have time to ask God to
forgive us and resolve ourselves to follow Him. Will we request that
forgiveness? Will we be resolved to follow Him? Those who are not Christians
should resolve that this will be the year of their salvation. Those who are
Christians should resolve to share the Gospel in the new year with anyone who
will listen.
Conclusion:
Most people make New Year’s resolutions.
Christians have the promise from the Lord for help in fulfilling our
resolutions. To increase the success rate of our
resolutions we must replace our old habits with new habits that will please
God. One resolution we should add to our list is
to witness more to those who are lost because God has given each of us the
ministry of reconciliation.
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Terry Dorsett has been a church planter and
author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud
father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God
works powerfully through times of suffering. Find all of his books at:
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