Sinclair Ferguson

In some ways, it's the secret of everything I do, every waking hour, every different activity.

They're all simply different ways of doing this one thing.

When I was a small boy in Scotland, each New Year's Eve, Hogmanay, as we called it, my parents would tell me to go into my room and write out 10 New Year's resolutions for the year to come.

I laugh now looking back when I remember how hard I thought it was to find 10 ways in which I needed to improve.

I could write them out much more easily today, I suspect.

But, you know, if you are a Christian, you really need only one new year resolution.

And Paul's will be a great help to you, especially if you're a younger Christian or a younger person, a teenager or perhaps a student.

Few things can be more helpful to you than to understand that this is the way to both simplify and integrate your life.

This is what will give you direction.

This is what will help you answer the great question, what am I really for?

As one of the older translations puts it, all I care for is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, to share the fellowship of his sufferings and be made like him, that one day I may attain to the resurrection.

What a great new year resolution.

This one thing I do, I want to know Christ.

I remember somebody telling me, if you want to define justification, it's just as if I'd never sinned, justified, right?

And I remember thinking, that's quite clever.

And then thinking, but it's not clever enough.

But many Christians think that's what justification is, means your sins are forgiven.

And it does mean that.

But if that were all justification meant, then in a way you're back with Adam in the Garden of Eden.

It's as though God is giving you a second chance to keep what the Westminster Assembly calls the covenant of works.