We have recently entered a new year. What do people often do at the start of a new year? They make new year’s resolutions. In essence, they make a vow to live differently, going forward into the new year. Do they work, and if not, why not?
What are some common examples? Perhaps leading the list is to get more exercise. Every January, how many gyms offer gym memberships? Those memberships often come without a long-term commitment, just get started. Perhaps the vow is made to change a bad habit: to stop drinking, or to spend less time on social media, or to stop being so critical and instead be more considerate of others. Maybe the vow is to lose weight. The list is more or less endless.
The goal is typically one of self-reformation, to reform one’s own life by and through one’s own strength.
We are now a month into the new year. How are the vows to reform going?
Studies of new year’s vows show the following: after one month, eighty percent have given up; four out of five do not even last a month. By March or April, almost all the rest have given up. Only about six percent make it through the entire year and beyond. Six percent!
That is not much of a success rate, is it? Doesn’t it sound a lot like Romans 7?
Romans 7:15–19 (NAU): For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
Question: How does God describe Paul in that state?
Romans 7:24 (NAU): Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
The good news is that is not the end of the story. But it sure describes our basic condition, doesn’t it? It certainly describes what typically happens with New Year’s resolutions.
We make vows to reform. We try, but in the end, as Scripture states, we cannot carry those vows out. We continue to do the very thing (or things) we desire to stop, or we fail to do the things we are seeking to start. That is not encouraging, is it?
What about attempts at religious reformation? Does that have a better track record? We’ll briefly examine that question in the next post.
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