New Year’s Resolution

With the new year comes the obvious: New Year’s resolutions.  They range in varying levels of ridiculousness.  Just to check out what different people have been thinking as we head into 2011, I googled  ”Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions” and found the following:

1. Spend More Time with Family & Friends
2. Fit in Fitness
3. Tame the Bulge
4. Quit Smoking
5. Enjoy Life More
6. Quit Drinking
7. Get Out of Debt
8. Learn Something New
9. Help Others
10. Get Organized

It’s interesting to find such a low level of resolve in many people today, yet see them dig deep to find some resolve when it comes to the turn of a new year.  They feel that each day they are given does not enable them with the ability to overcome certain difficulties or accomplish certain tasks.  However, they seem to be trusting on some special power that comes with a new year to help them accomplish their goals.

What really is so special about the new year?  What power manifests inside a human to give him the to ability to complete such marvelous feats?

By the end of the year, it proves in many lives that nothing was backing the aspiration at all as it failed to reach accomplishment by the end of the year.  However, a Christian need not back his resolutions on the strength of “New Year’s” spirit.

Titus 2:11-12 says,

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (ESV).

God has given us grace, yet grace in the world today has lost almost all of its true meaning.  Grace is thrown around like garbage.  People toss it around as if it were free.

I’m not here to preach on works or a system where grace is earned by the merit of any man.  However, as grace is a free gift to us, it is not technically “completely free” overall.

When someone buys your lunch, it’s a free lunch for you.  It is not free, though, for the friend that payed for the lunch.  In the same way, grace is a free gift from God to us.  However, it costs his Son dearly.  Read but the chapter of Isaiah 53 to catch a glimpse of the pain Christ endured on the cross.

Isaiah 53: 5 says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed.”

Grace is not merely an excuse to sin.  Christ did not die so people could abuse grace, sinning at will while knowing they could be forgiven.  Grace is not the unlimited supply of “Get-Out-of-Jail-Free” cards you can bust out after volitionally finding your way to jail.

Romans 5 offers great hope, writing that, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (v. 20).  Following this verse, Romans 6:1-2 says,

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”

Jesus died to sin so you don’t have to live in it anymore!  Grace is no justification for transgression.

“Grace is not an excuse to sin, it’s the ability not to.”

Therefore, Christians need not the spirit of New Year’s to have resolve.  Instead, Christians should be living each moment of their lives with both resolve and confidence.

The resolve is founded upon the fact that though you were dead in your sins and fully incapable of changing that (Ephesians 2:1-3), God’s grace is the empowerment to say “no” to sin and “yes” to godly living.  It is the ability to repudiate sin’s binding chains and death’s ringing sting.  More so, it is the ability to live a godly life in a world all but void of godliness entirely.  And all of the above can be done with full confidence that the strength to do so comes from the Lord.

And thus, with the grace of God at hand, I head into this new year of 2011 resolved.  I’m reminded of a Jonathan Edwards quote that I heard a couple months back: “Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.”

I’m ready to see more spiritual growth in my life this year than I have grown ever before.  I’m not going to gauge how hard I must work upon the progress of those around me.  I’m ready to take my campus by storm for the name of Jesus Christ.  I’m ready to kill sin in my life instead of letting it linger and grow.  I’m ready to step it up in areas of service and in my quiet time with the Lord.

Though on my own power, or in the spirit of New Year’s, my resolution will not happen, by the grace of God, I am sanctioned for further sanctification!