What Are Your Plans for This New Year?

One more year is now past, and you may be thinking about new opportunities and goals to help you start the new year right. If you’re rolling your eyes at the thought of “New Year’s Resolutions,” let me just state the obvious: There’s nothing significant about January 1 when it comes to goals. There is nothing magical about new year’s resolutions. In fact, research has found that only about 45% of people even make resolutions. (And 35% of those who do quit them before the end of January.)

It is somewhat comforting to have a new beginning and a restart. We see this through our own temporal viewpoints. However, what if we stepped back and looked at this new year and the future based on Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”?

We would like to help God fill in the blanks on how this verse applies to each of us individually here and now in our physical temporal world. A plethora of sermons have been preached and articles written concerning this verse. For purposes of this article, let’s take an eternal and somewhat different view.

Could this verse be referring to God’s plans of eternal salvation which involves justification, sanctification, and glorification? These all prosper us beyond anything that we can imagine in eternity and certainly are for our eternal good (not harm) which provides us hope based on the promises of God (not wishful thinking) and an eternal future with a loving God and His family?

Justification has to do with God’s declaration about the sinner, not any change within the sinner. That is, justification, per se, does not make anyone holy; it simply declares him/her to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. Romans 3:23-24 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”. By accepting Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, we are justified (counted righteous by God, just as if we have never sinned).  We lost righteousness and our personal relationship with God through sin.  And now through Jesus, our Redeemer, we obtain the gift of righteousness and the abundance of grace (unconditional and undeserved love) whereby we can once again have an intimate relationship with God (Romans 5:17, 21).  “We can now put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

Sanctification   Because of sin we lost our divine image of God (righteousness and holiness) and now He recreates and sanctifies us through Christ to conform us back progressively to that image. Romans 8:28-29,  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” 2 Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit”. 

With this divine image of God we are equipped to obey Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”. The word “transformed” is the Greek word “metamorphosis” which is what happens when a caterpillar spins a web, then struggles out of the web to become a beautiful butterfly. You no longer have to be a creature slowly moving through a difficult world but one with wings to fly above it. You are then able to “Set your mind on things above, not on the things of earth”. (Colossians 3:2)

Glorification God’s final removal of sin from the life of everyone who is saved. 1 John 3:2 “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

According to Philippians 3:20-21, “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”

In heaven we will be like Jesus Christ, who is incorruptible, eternal, glorified, powerful, and spiritual. At Christ’s coming, His honor, praise, majesty, and holiness—will be realized in us; instead of being mortals burdened with sin nature, we will be changed into holy immortals with direct and unhindered access to God’s presence, and we will enjoy holy communion with Him throughout eternity.

In considering glorification, we should focus on Christ, for He is every Christian’s “blessed hope”; also, we may consider final glorification as the culmination of sanctification into the image of Christ.

In summary, Salvation through Christ (redemption for what was lost) involves God’s plans of justification (salvation from the penalty of sin), sanctification (salvation from the power of sin), and glorification (salvation from the presence of sin).

Praise You, Heavenly Father, for these great plans that You provided Your children!