New Year’s Resolutions Every Christian Should Make

By Dorothy Errett

“Happy New Year!”—How can we, as Christians, help to make it so? We may wish it with our lips, but, unless we also wish it deeply enough in our hearts to do our part to bring that happiness, which is blessedness, to the world, our wishes are all in vain.

We pause at the threshold of the new year to take both a back ward and a forward look. The business world is taking stock of things material to ascertain what growth has been made over the year preceding, and to plan better things for the year ahead. Is it not a fitting time for the Christian to reflect on things spiritual?

The old year, with its joys and sorrows, its blessings and hardships, its successes and failures, its work accomplished and tasks left undone, its kindnesses and acts of selfishness, has passed forever. Let us rejoice, as we should at the dawn of each new day, over the privilege of having a fresh start.

As Christians, we should be unwilling to spend any New Year just as we have lived the last one. Our destination is before, not behind, us. We should be looking forward to making the New Year a happy, blessed one, not only in word, but in deed. The experiences of the year just gone should be lessons so well learned as to entitle us to promotion into a higher grade in life’s school—a stepping-stone onward, not backward.

A Notable Resolution.—In Paul’s letter to the Philippians (3:12-14), he sums up perhaps the best resolution ever penned by man: “Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold; but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (American Standard Version).

“Forgetting the things which are behind.”—Many things had befallen Paul in his earlier life, the remembrance of which would have hindered him in his Christian work. Being sorry for them, he resolved to forget them. To remember them, except as lessons learned, and to constantly lament over them, was only to cripple him. He had no time to sit idly down and grieve.

There were, however, remembrances which were precious and helpful to Paul, such as his own conversion, the conversions of others through him, the kindness of the brethren to him. It is not of such as these that he speaks when he resolves to forget.

Let us, too, as Christians, resolve with this new year to forget those things in our lives which worry, hinder and keep us from pressing on toward the goal. We can not go back and begin all over again, as we would like to, but we can, just where we are, so live as to redeem the mistakes of the past.

“Press on.”—Turning to John 9:4, we are given a splendid program for our lives in our effort to reach the goal set by the One who ran the race before us. In this passage, our attention is called to the truth that, as we press on with our faces toward the future, we must not forget the necessity of doing our very best each day as it comes. Let us use today to the glory of God. It can never be recalled, and the future is uncertain. Jesus said: “We must work the work of him that sent me while it is day.” What a privilege to be identified with him in the work of the kingdom.

“A living sacrifice.”—There is perhaps no other one chapter in the Bible which contains advice concerning a wider field of conduct than does the twelfth chapter of Romans. In it Paul admonishes the individual Christians, both as to the living of his personal life unto himself—his sacrifice of self to the service of God, the seeking of spiritual things, an exhortation to humility, sincerity, seeking after good and abhorrence of evil, diligence, patience, the necessity of prayer—and also as to his life in relation to his fellow men—love for others, kindliness, generosity, returning good for evil, sympathy, the spirit of peace and good will and unity in the work of the church.

Most any one of us need only read carefully through the chapter to find ourselves self-condemned. We have failed to take some, if not many, of the steps necessary to reach the prize in Christ Jesus.

Have we failed to give ourselves to do our share of his work? Have we been self-centered and proud, unkind to others by being unforgiving, impatient, by failing to help in time of need and to return good for evil? Have we thought of ourselves more highly than we ought to think? Have we lacked faith in God? Have we neglected to spend a quiet time alone with him in preparation for the race which is ours to run? Then, let us at this New Year, with our faces toward the goal, make a high resolve to use the consciousness of our failures in the past as a stepping-stone to higher things.

Dorothy P. Errett (1892-1975) was the sister of Edwin R. Errett, who served as Editor of Christian Standard from 1929 until his unexpected death in 1944. This article first appeared in the Christian Standard on December 21, 1929.