What sort of New Year's Resolution should a Christian make?

As we have already said, it is in the cultivation of this positive aspect of holiness that power is obtained - power to avoid the pollutions of the world, and power to grow daily in the likeness of our blessed Lord. The reason is plain, for the more our minds are absorbed in Christ, the more we enjoy intimacy with Him; the greater our delight in His glory, the more intensely we shall desire to please Him, and thus to avoid all and everything which would becloud our communion with Him and His love. "If ye love Me," He said to His disciples, "keep My commandments," and obedience is ever the pathway of holiness. We learn, moreover, that love, love to Christ - and love to Christ is ever produced by His love to us - is the mainspring of holiness. Yea, it is all heart-work, as indeed Paul teaches in one aspect, when he says, "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all … to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints." (1 Thess. 3:12-13.) And it must not be forgotten that for the pursuit of holiness the heart must be engaged in it. We do not drift into any attainment; there must be real purpose of heart to reach the end desired. May it not then be well, as we stand upon the threshold of another year, to challenge ourselves as to whether we are commencing this new stage of our wilderness journey with this fixed object before us - to seek, by the grace of God, growing measures of conformity to Christ every day, while awaiting His return? Nothing else is worth living for, and if we live for this there will be the unbounded enjoyment of the Lord's manifestation of Himself to our hearts.

May the forthcoming year be marked by our giving heed to His commandments, so that we may act as He would have us act, and thus give a living expression of that which marks the divine nature in testimony for God.

This New Year must be marked by good works, and they must be the fruit of the life within, the life of Jesus made manifest in our mortal flesh, and as we live within the compass of our benediction, we shall know what the PEACE of God is and His POWER, we shall be PRESERVED by the Great Shepherd whose flock we are, and PERFECTED by the will of God, through Jesus Christ TO WHOM BE GLORY FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN.

What is it that we need first and most, if the months that lie ahead of us, if the Lord will, are to be fruitful in the things that are pleasing to God? How are we to fulfil the relationships of life, and in them adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things? What is it that lies at the basis of all spiritual life and service, and without which we can only fail in every sphere of life? With the exercises that come to most of us, as one year gives place to another, we may well face such questions as these, and if we do we shall find that there is but one answer to them, and it is this: What is needed first and most and continuously, and without which we know nothing of the art of Christian living, is THE FULL AND UNRESERVED ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOD'S CLAIMS OVER US. Without this we build without a foundation, we waste our energies, and live unreal and useless lives. God's claims are paramount; since He is God, they must be, and for our blessing as well as for His glory we must own His claims, and obey the word, "YIELD YOURSELVES UNTO GOD."

What is it that we need first and most, if the months that lie ahead of us, if the Lord will, are to be fruitful in the things that are pleasing to God? How are we to fulfil the relationships of life, and in them adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things? What is it that lies at the basis of all spiritual life and service, and without which we can only fail in every sphere of life? With the exercises that come to most of us, as one year gives place to another, we may well face such questions as these, and if we do we shall find that there is but one answer to them, and it is this: What is needed first and most and continuously, and without which we know nothing of the art of Christian living, is THE FULL AND UNRESERVED ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOD'S CLAIMS OVER US. Without this we build without a foundation, we waste our energies, and live unreal and useless lives. God's claims are paramount; since He is God, they must be, and for our blessing as well as for His glory we must own His claims, and obey the word, “YIELD YOURSELVES UNTO GOD.”

Young Christians, do you know what it is to mortify your members which are upon earth? We are not Christians worth the name if we have not to say “NO” to ourselves many a time. It is well to really face matters, and once and for all decide to seek by the grace and help of the Lord to be true to Christ in all things, and to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

I do not believe that it is right for a New Testament believer to make a vow. Unless we have not really understood the plague of our own hearts, we would not dare trust ourselves to be able to perform what we have promised. It is better to tell the Lord that we love Him truly, and want to please Him, but that we need Him to help us. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

It need hardly be said that the Christian does not make vows. These belong to the legal system in which God was dealing with man in the flesh; but in the type there is precious divine teaching for our learning through which God would have us to profit. Although vows belong to the legal system of Judaism, the devotedness expressed in the vow should mark the Christian at all times, knowing that Christ died for all, "that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15).

It is hardly needful to say that the Christian is not called upon to make a vow, for vows belong to the legal system in which God was dealing with man in the flesh; but the separation and devotion of the Nazarite are to mark the Christian in a spiritual way. Of this the Apostle writes in 2 Corinthians 5, Christ "died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15).

Today the child of God is not in any sense under law, but being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ he is brought into the liberty of eternal life by the pure grace of God, and blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. But Nazariteship has a striking application to every child of God in the present dispensation of grace. Though we are warned to make no vow at all, yet in voluntarily receiving Christ as Saviour and Lord, every believer owns Christ's absolute authority over him forever. This is true whether he understands it well or not. He accepts the One who is supreme in devoted separation to God and from evil, and in accepting Him he accepts with Him that blessed place of separation. This is the very meaning of the truth of sanctification in the New Testament: a state of being set apart for God. Do we not therefore gladly accept the spiritual responsibilities involved in Nazariteship-personal self-denial, thorough subjection to the Lord and separation from evil associations?