A Little Theology of Resolutions
00:00:00.000 | Some Christians believe in and use New Year's resolutions, others are anti New
00:00:09.620 | Year's resolutions. We're getting a number of email questions on this now.
00:00:12.960 | Pastor John, for Christians, are New Year's resolutions helpful? Are they
00:00:17.720 | harmful? Are they just a setup for failure? Or are they simply unnecessary?
00:00:21.880 | Well, as always, Tony, it depends on what you mean by resolutions. If you mean
00:00:27.320 | declarations of what you intend to do by dint of willpower, then that will not
00:00:35.000 | only probably fail, if it doesn't fail, it's not Christian either. So if it
00:00:44.320 | fails, it fails, and if it succeeds, it fails, because that's not what the
00:00:49.200 | Christian life is. It's not lived that way. Not at the beginning of a year, not
00:00:54.760 | at the beginning of a day, or beginning of an hour. You don't screw up your
00:00:59.200 | willpower to obey a command and resolve to do a thing by virtue of strong
00:01:08.120 | resolution and call that Christianity. It's not. The mystery of holiness is
00:01:14.480 | that we live our lives in the strength of another. That is, we walk by the Spirit.
00:01:23.880 | We walk by faith in the power of another. We depend on another, namely the Holy
00:01:31.480 | Spirit, to do in us and through us what needs to be done so that another, namely
00:01:38.280 | God, will get the glory. The principle, whether it's New Year, New Morning, New
00:01:44.840 | Hour, is 1 Peter 4 11. "Let him who serves serve in the strength that God
00:01:53.920 | supplies." So you can paraphrase it, "Let him who resolves to do a thing or not do
00:01:59.560 | a thing resolve in the strength that God supplies so that in everything God may
00:02:04.480 | be glorified through Jesus Christ to him be glory forever." So yes, go ahead, resolve.
00:02:10.480 | Paul put it like this, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace
00:02:16.520 | toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of
00:02:21.920 | them." So he gets up in the morning and he says, "What do I have to do today? Well, I
00:02:25.640 | have to travel to Philippi, I have to make three tents tonight, I have to prepare a
00:02:29.040 | message for tomorrow morning. I resolve to do those things." And then he says, "Though
00:02:34.000 | it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me." 1 Corinthians 15 10. Or he
00:02:39.600 | says in Romans 15 8, "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ
00:02:44.760 | has accomplished through me to bring obedience to the Gentiles." So he says,
00:02:49.040 | "We're going to Spain, let's go! I resolve to go to Spain, I've got this ambition to
00:02:53.720 | preach the gospel where Christ has not been named, let's go!" And then he writes,
00:02:59.200 | "I'm not going to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished
00:03:03.680 | through me." So his resolutions are empowered by, sustained by, worked through
00:03:09.560 | the grace of Christ, which is right at the heart of what it means to live the
00:03:15.440 | Christian life, not just make resolutions. Philippians 1 12, "Work out
00:03:20.360 | your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one who is at work in you."
00:03:24.080 | Which could be paraphrased, "Resolve, make a resolution with fear and trembling, for
00:03:29.680 | God is the one who's the making the resolution in you." That's the way to live
00:03:33.880 | the Christian life. So my answer is yes, we should make resolves lots of times,
00:03:41.160 | not just at the beginning of a year. Whenever we feel, whenever we see
00:03:46.960 | something that we should be doing that we're not doing, we should resolve. Do it!
00:03:53.120 | Whenever we're not doing something that we should be doing and we recognize that
00:03:57.720 | we're not doing it, we should resolve. Don't do it! Or did I say that backwards?
00:04:01.600 | You know what I mean. We got it. Resolve not to do what you shouldn't do and
00:04:07.160 | resolve to do what you should do whenever you see that you're not doing
00:04:11.160 | it or that you're doing it. God doesn't like for our hearts to be irresolute.
00:04:17.520 | He says, "That'd be the opposite, wouldn't it? The opposite of resolving is to be
00:04:22.520 | irresolute, undecisive." And here's what Elijah said about that. "How long will
00:04:28.480 | you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him.
00:04:32.520 | If Baal is God, follow Him." So resolve this day. Who are you going to serve? Get off
00:04:37.080 | the fence and follow your Lord. And I think there are a lot of Christians who
00:04:41.720 | are afraid of resolutions, and the opposite of resolution is not this
00:04:46.200 | wonderful freedom of dependence on God to empower them, it's sitting on a fence
00:04:49.840 | and not making any commitments to be or do a certain thing. Paul said,
00:04:56.800 | this has been really important in my understanding, Tony, of tough decisions. He
00:05:02.560 | said in Romans 14, 5, "One man esteems one day of another. Another esteems
00:05:10.360 | every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind."
00:05:16.760 | That's amazing! In other words, whether you go with saying, "All days are alike," or
00:05:22.640 | whether you go with esteeming one day above another, don't be wishy-washy!
00:05:26.920 | Don't waffle, don't sit on the fence. God doesn't like irresolute hearts. Make up
00:05:33.560 | your mind. Decide, resolve, act. So David says to the counselors of Solomon, "Set
00:05:40.120 | your mind and heart to seek the Lord." What is that but resolve? Set your mind
00:05:45.840 | and heart. About Rehoboam, the Bible says, "He did evil, for he did not set his
00:05:54.160 | heart to seek the Lord." He didn't resolve to seek the Lord. He just coasted in his
00:05:59.080 | life. So here's a theology of resolution in a verse, Tony. This is the
00:06:05.520 | most important two verses in the Bible on New Year's resolutions. So everybody
00:06:11.200 | should just go get their Bible, study these two verses, they'll have a
00:06:13.960 | theology of resolution. 2 Thessalonians 1, 11, and 12. "To this end, we
00:06:20.120 | always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and may
00:06:24.920 | fulfill," may God fulfill, "every resolve for good and every work of faith by his
00:06:34.960 | power, that the name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified." Everything is there. So
00:06:41.080 | here they are. You should resolve for good. Resolve good things in your life.
00:06:46.360 | Second, this is pursued by faith so that it's a work of faith. Third, God acts
00:06:52.360 | through that faith by his power. Fourth, thus God fulfills the good resolve. Fifth,
00:06:57.840 | thus Jesus gets glory. That's the theology of resolution in two verses.
00:07:03.400 | 2 Thessalonians 1, 11 to 12. So my answer is not just at New Year's, but all the
00:07:10.360 | time. Whenever we see we're falling short, resolve not to fall short, and whenever
00:07:16.040 | we see something that needs to be done, resolve to do it.
00:07:21.320 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. So, Pastor
00:07:26.640 | John, what podcast do you listen to? Wait, I'll ask that tomorrow. Until then, please
00:07:31.880 | email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can
00:07:34.880 | visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles,
00:07:37.880 | sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host,
00:07:41.300 | Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
00:07:44.320 | [BLANK_AUDIO]