p. 13 | About Good Resolutions by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 26, 1911

About Good Resolutions

By W. A. S.

As the early new year proceeds, the writers of press paragraphs pass their usual light remarks about good resolutions and their easy abandonment. There is no virtue, however, in decrying good resolutions. And the turn of a year, or any other time in which one is led to think reflectively and to look forward with determination, is a good time to resolve to choose and cleave to the right.

True, a good resolution is not an end in itself; nor is it a means to an end. It is rather a taking hold of the means and the power by which to accomplish the good desired. In one who has not learned to believe, it may be a summoning of the powers of the will to put away some physical habit or to achieve a worthy object; and we admire the disposition, and recognize the fact that every good impulse is from above. In the believer, a genuinely good resolution is a laying hold of divine power, by faith; and for such a one there is the assurance of strength from heaven for the doing of the will of God. The confidence is not at all in the good resolution or purpose, but in the grace of Christ, that inspires the purpose.

The apostle Paul was not above making resolutions. But he made them in the right way:—

“When I therefore,” he said, “was thus minded, did I show fickleness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be the yea yea and the nay nay?” 2 Cor. 1:17, R. V.

The fickleness, the yea and the nay, the up-and-down experience, the breaking of good resolutions, are because too often the purpose is indeed purposed “according to the flesh,” and the resolution is but as a rope of sand. The apostle formed his purposes in Christ, and his trust was in him for the execution of them: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, . . . was not yea and nay, but in him is yea.”

Our trust also must wholly be “in him” for the positive, steady experience of climbing the upward way. Let our resolutions be rooted in his grace, with no confidence in the flesh.

Paul had learned the powerlessness of mere resolutions to conquer sin, in the experience that drove him to Christ. “For to will is present with me,” he said of that struggle; “but how to perform that which is good I find not.” Rom. 7:18. And he cried out, “O wretched man!” But he found the Saviour of sinners; and he never ceased to tell of the power by which he was set free from the dominion of sin, and enabled to triumph in Christ over natural tendencies and weaknesses.

The Lord has made the will free, in order that we may choose, and will to know and to do. By his Spirit he ever works on every will to draw it toward himself. We may resist his power just here. But if only we exercise the will power for the right, and resolutely submit our wills and our lives to God, he will work in us “both to will and to do,” strengthening every right purpose and every good resolution.

Let our resolutions, our determinations, reach out after God, and he will meet us. The prodigal son made a good resolution when he resolved, “I will arise and go to my father.” “And he arose.” And the father, the awakening memory of whose love inspired the resolution, met the wanderer “when he was yet a great way off.” Eternal life, and a place in the Father’s house, are worth gaining. By the grace of our Lord Jesus, in whom is the yea and the amen, let us cultivate a resolution and determination of purpose that shall hold on by faith to the power divine.

So many humor the weak will instead of strengthening it by watching unto prayer. The power of the will grows by exercise, the same as any other faculty. Christians have need to throw the resolution of purpose into serving God that successful men put into worldly business or the pursuit of the earthly prize. Inwrought by divine grace, our wills may become iron-like and flint-like for constancy. “For the Lord God will help me; . . . therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.” Isa. 50:7. There is no strength in our resolutions, but with resolution of purpose let us lay hold of God’s strength.

The same apostle who tells us how athletes trained for the prize in the games of the old Roman arenas, expresses his own determined resolution of purpose in words that we may well take as our motto for every new year and every new day:—

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3:13, 14.

W. A. S.