Today is Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day.
As the name suggests, this holiday is observed every year so you can get out of any resolutions you made going into the new year—resolutions that are now, perhaps, looking a little more daunting than you originally thought. Now’s your chance!
Did you know that according to a 2016 survey,[1] of the 47% of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions, only 9% feel they are successful in keeping them by the end of the year? (And that 9% seems rather suspicious to me, seeing as they’re the ones determining whether they were successful)
A more recent study from 2023 showed that while 87% of survey participants were confident they’d follow through on their resolutions, only 22% of all participants stuck with their resolutions by February. The goals they were so determined to keep were quickly abandoned in 31 days or less.
Why? Participants from a 2014 study gave these reasons for failure: They had unrealistic goals, didn’t keep track of their progress, made too many resolutions, or even forgot about their resolutions altogether.
Whether it’s the plethora of survey statistics or based on our own experiences, one thing is clear: It’s incredibly hard for us to keep resolutions. In fact, many people go without making New Year’s resolutions for that very reason. They know they aren’t going to be able to keep them.
In his Word, God makes it absolutely clear what our resolution needs to be if we want to be in heaven with him. All of God’s law, in its entirety, must be kept perfectly our whole lives. Our success isn’t based on how we feel we did. God is the one who decides. And his standards are higher than any of us could ever hope to meet: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).
Choosing for argument’s sake to ignore that Scripture makes it clear we’re sinful from birth (Psalm 51:5) and that all people have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), James 2:10 tells us that if, by some chance, someone manages to keep all of God’s law and stumbles at just one point, that person is guilty of breaking the whole law.
Just like that, all hope of achieving heaven by our own merit is lost.
That realization, along with our many failures to keep God’s law perfectly, is enough to drive us to despair. Perhaps it even tempts us to throw in the towel and quit trying to obey God’s law altogether. But concentrating on our broken resolutions and daily failures takes our focus away from where it needs to be: on Jesus and what he has done for us in our place.
The Scriptures themselves testify about Jesus, and in them, the Holy Spirit inspired the psalmist to write, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:7-8).
What a wonderful, amazing God we have! The very reason Jesus came into this world with a dauntless spirit—unbroken, unwavering, and unmatched—was to do God’s will and keep his law. Nothing would keep him from doing what he set out to do. And he did. Resolution kept—perfectly. Not for himself, but for you and me because God knew that we couldn’t. By his perfect life and innocent death on the cross—in our place—Jesus has taken away all of our sins. We now wear his robes of righteousness, and heaven’s gates are thrown open wide.
On this day of ditching resolutions, thank God for the one who didn’t throw in the towel, the one who didn’t quit, the one who didn’t abandon his resolution to save you and me and the whole world from our sins—even though it would mean an agonizing, shameful death on a cross and suffering hell itself.
“Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.”
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.
[1] Discover Happy Habits survey and article “New Year’s Resolution Statistics (2023 Updated).”
Alex Brown is the marketing and content copywriter at Northwestern Publishing House. He has his Master of Divinity degree from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time in God’s creation.