As we stand on the edge of a new year, many of us are naturally reflecting on where we have been and where we hope to go. The world calls this “New Year’s resolutions.” Scripture calls it something deeper: repentance, faith, renewal, and hope.
This past Lord’s Day, we looked at the gracious invitation of Hebrews 4:14–16. Because we have a great High Priest—Jesus Christ, the Son of God—we are called to hold fast our confession and to draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
That invitation assumes something fundamental about the Christian life: we need help.
Weakness Is The Way Of The Christian Life
The Christian life is not a story of self-improvement, but of death and resurrection in Christ. We die to ourselves daily so that we may live in Christ. We confess our sins because we are weak. We draw near because we cannot stand on our own. And when we do, we find mercy for our guilt and grace for real, ongoing change.
Scripture teaches us that when we are weak, then we are strong—not because weakness is good in itself, but because weakness drives us to Christ (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Embracing weakness is not self-pity or defeatism; it is humble faith. It is acknowledging reality and bringing that reality to the only place where help is found.
Drawing Near Requires Honesty, Prayer, And Community
To draw near to the throne of grace means we must be honest—honest with God, honest with ourselves, and honest with one another. It means confessing not only the shortcomings and sins we clearly see, but also being humble enough to receive correction and feedback about those we do not see. We can’t do this alone.
This requires discipline and desperation in prayer. A prayerless Christian is not a strong Christian, but a self-reliant one (or at least someone who thinks they are). We pray because we know we need help. We pray because God reigns and listens and cares. We pray because grace is actually given. And this is true in every area of the Christian life. When we faithfully embrace the ordinary means of grace that God has given, grace is actually given. And we do not do this alone.
The Christian life is a community project. God has not designed us to pursue holiness in isolation. We need the ordinary means of grace. We need Covenant Renewal Worship each Lord’s Day. As Spurgeon said, “The Lord’s Day is the market day for the soul, where we trade our sins for His grace, our weakness for His strength, our sorrow for His joy.” We need the preached Word, the sacraments, prayer, and fellowship. But we also need one another throughout the week—encouraging, exhorting, forgiving, praying for, and bearing one another’s burdens.
The church is not meant to be an event we attend once a week, but the center of our lives every day. Often people avoid this reality because they have been hurt by the church in some way. But if we are going to be faithful, church hurt is unavoidable. We’re a bunch of sinners—messes in progress—who make mistakes, fail each other, and hurt each other intentionally and unintentionally. We are God’s household, and therefore a family; and like all families we hurt each other and fail each other, but we also forgive each other, love each other, and help each other. It’s a lot easier to walk away from the church when you get hurt if you keep the church on the margins of your life. But if the church is at the center of our lives we’ll be more prone to work things out and stay.
As John Stott once said, “If the church is central to God’s purpose, as seen in both history and the gospel [and it is], it must surely also be central to our lives. How can we take lightly what God takes so seriously? How dare we push to the perimeter what God has placed at the center?”
Is the church central to your life, or are you trying to go at it alone? When is the last time you asked for prayer? When is the last time you asked for help? When is the last time you prayed for others? When is the last time you freely forgave others, not because they deserved it or said and did all the right things, but because God in Christ has forgiven you of far more and far worse? Are you taking advantage of all the church is and has to offer, or are you seeking to be self-reliant?
Remember, weakness is the way. As Christ told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So may we say with Paul, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
New Year’s Goals In Light Of A Daily And Weekly Faith
As we approach the new year, it is worth remembering that the Christian life is more daily and weekly than yearly. God’s mercies are new every morning—and especially so on the Lord’s Day (Lamentations 3:22–23). But for those who are in Christ, every day is a new beginning (2 Corinthians 5:17).
If anything, the Church Year/Church Calendar should shape our lives, not the world’s calendar. Still, setting goals and resolutions can be a good and wise practice when they are grounded in grace rather than driven by guilt.
For me, 2025 was a year of gratitude. The Lord was kind to grow me closer to Him and to my family, and to grow me in numerous ways. In many ways 2025 has been a year of healing and recovery, but also a year of growing in deeper and closer relationships. Not only has God blessed me with a loving and gracious church family, but in my church He’s also given me some of the best friends a man could have. With that said, I know I need to learn to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better pastor, and a better friend. God’s grace abounded, even to the chief of sinners, but I still have a lot of room for growth.
Looking ahead to 2026, my goals include deeper study and memorization of Scripture, a more devoted prayer life, making more memories with Rachel and our kids and spending more time in the Word with them as well, committing myself even more fully to the church, spending less time on screens and more time reading good books, writing more, getting better sleep, honoring God in my diet, running farther and faster, lifting heavier, and doing so wisely—without injury, Lord willing.
I encourage you to evaluate the past year with gratitude and honesty, and set goals for the year ahead with humility and hope. But remember—goals are tools, not saviors. They serve us; they do not define us.
Love, Not Mere Duty, Is The Engine Of Lasting Change
When thinking of goals and our need for growth, an important question presses itself upon us: What actually leads to lasting change in the Christian life?
We might think that duty is the answer. There is a place for duty. Scripture gives us commands, warnings, and even threats. A husband, for example, should absolutely feel the weight of his wedding vows. He ought to know that adultery is sin, that it breaks covenant, and that it brings devastating consequences. In that sense, duty can restrain us from great evil—and thanks be to God for that restraint.
But duty alone is never God’s ultimate aim.
A faithful husband does not merely avoid adultery because “he has to.” He avoids it because he loves his wife. He does not want to betray her trust, grieve her heart, or fracture their union. Love does far more than mere obligation ever could.
C. S. Lewis captured this beautifully when he wrote, “A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc.) can do the journey on their own.”
Duty may keep us from falling off the cliff, but love teaches us how to walk rightly on the path.
This is why confession, repentance, and embracing weakness must always be grounded in love. If we only repent because we fear consequences, we may modify behavior for a season—but our hearts will remain unchanged. But when we repent because we love God, because we grieve that our sin offends Him and harms others, repentance becomes something deeper and more durable.
The same is true in community life. We may initially pursue reconciliation because Scripture commands it. But real healing comes when we begin to love one another enough to forgive freely, to speak truth gently, and to bear one another’s burdens patiently.
Grace and love train us not merely to obey, but to want what God wants.
Our Strength Is Found In Christ And In Union With Him
Thinking back to Hebrews, what the author does again and again is point to failures and the consequences of looking away from Christ, and then He reminds us that Christ is infinitely better than anything else that would steal our gaze, and He calls us to look to Him once again. He calls us to consider the consequences of sin, of hardening our hearts, of rebellion and failure to hold fast… But he also calls us to consider Christ, our great High Priest, who is everything we need and everything we truly want. And after calling our attention to Christ, then he calls us to hold fast.
Chesterton once said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” The idea being that love is far greater motivation than hate or fear. And so it is in the Christian life. Self-control is a fruit, and therefore a gift of the Holy Spirit. And to be sure, discipline and self-control go hand in hand. But how does the Spirit enable us to be disciplined and self-controlled? While He will certainly make us aware of sin, especially our sin and the potential consequences of it, if we are to truly hate sin and fear the consequences of it, we must truly love Christ. And the fruit of the Spirit is love—love showing itself and working in and through joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).
If we have any hope of actually making some lasting changes in 2026, those changes must be rooted in love, and therefore in grace. While we should fear the consequences of sin, more than that we should hate our sin. But in order to truly hate sin we must love those our sin is or would be against—we must truly love God and love people. But in order to truly love we must realize how much we have been loved.
God’s Word reminds us, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9–10). And then in 1 John 4:19 we’re told, “We love because He first loved us.”
Or consider what Paul says in Romans 5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:5–8). As Martin Luther so beautifully put it, “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.” In other words, Jesus is, demonstrates, and gives the love of God, and the Spirit opens our eyes to, pours in, and grips us by the love of God, which enables us to love.
Ephesians 5:1–2 says, “be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” We are to walk, to live in and through and by the love of Christ. We are to live a life of love just like the love God has lavished on us in Christ. And this love is a sacrificial love rooted in the glory of God above all else. A love rooted in the mercy and grace of God, not in our or anyone else’s ability to earn it or deserve it. It’s all rooted in the nature and character of God, in His great love for us and the riches of His mercy (Ephesians 2:4–5).
We would do well to memorize 1 Corinthians 1:26–31, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
But again, when we are weak yet looking to Christ then we are strong… So ultimately, our strength and our hope are not found in our worth, what we deserve, or what we accomplish or fail to accomplish. Our strength and our hope are found in our union with Christ. He is our great High Priest.
Christ, like the high priests of old, has entered into the Holy of Holies with all the garments a priests must wear, especially His priestly breastplate that bears the names and needs of His people. But our names and needs are not merely engraved upon His priestly breastplate, but on His nail-scarred hands. And because He is at the right hand of the Father, our names are written in heaven, not only in the Lamb’s Book of Life, but on the Lamb Himself.
That means that regardless of the ups and downs of the coming year, regardless of success or struggle, regardless of how motivated we feel, we have gospel-facts that trump our feelings, and thus a reason to rejoice and motivation to love and walk in faithfulness that cannot be taken away.
Near the end of his life, as his health failed and his public ministry faded, the great pastor/doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, was asked how he was coping with the loss of influence and strength. His biographer, Iain Murray, recorded his response. Lloyd-Jones simply said, echoing the words of Jesus, “‘Don’t rejoice that spirits submit to you. Rejoice that your name is written in heaven.’ I am perfectly content.”
That is the confidence Hebrews calls us to. That is the joy that carries us through weakness. And that is the grace that meets us every time we draw near. And that is the grace and the love that enables us to truly change.
So as we enter a new year, let us not resolve in our own strength but embrace weakness—not to wallow in it, but to bring it to Christ. Resolutions are great, but repentance, faith, renewal, and hope, all fueled by genuine love and grace are better. So let us draw near daily and weekly. Let us walk together. And let us rejoice, come what may, that our names are written in heaven.
May the Lord bless us and keep us, even in our great weakness, as we step into the year ahead—together, and in Christ.
In Christ’s service and yours,
Nick Esch