By Jim Mettenbrink
One of the fortunes of the New Year is the resolve to be and do better – lose weight, (especially after holiday feasting), paint the house, more discipline in chores and work, better work and the list goes on ad infinitum. We call them “New” Years resolutions. Often the same ones are repeated year after year, but like a firecracker dud, soon fizzles and are forgotten. Unfortunately, these resolutions are all focused on the temporal, the here and now.
The truth is there is only one resolution which ultimately matters – whether you have become a Christian and live faithfully according to the New Testament to glorify Jesus in your life and on the final day entering the abode in heaven to live with Him eternally. Indeed, becoming a Christian is a “new” resolution, not for the year, but for life.
The new resolution began with Jesus and His “New” covenant which He offered to each person who will resolve to follow Him. On the eve of His crucifixion He announced to His disciples, “For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).
The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore if anyone is IN Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17). The only way a person can be in Christ is baptism prompted by a trusting faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior – “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). In that grave of water, a person puts off the old man and rises from the grave to walk in newness of life, having put on Christ (Romans 6:3-4). Putting on Christ is putting on the new man – adapting the character of Christ.
Paul admonished the Ephesians to “put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24). When a person rises from the grave of water (baptism), “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1-2).
The resolution to become a Christian is a radical transformation, a new creation, a new person, a new lifestyle. Not for the year but for life.