Resolved To Follow Christ

Happy 2026! According to the Gregorian calendar, it has been two millennia, two decades, six years, and ten days since the birth of Christ. Our calendar is named the Gregorian calendar after Pope Gregory the eighth, who decreed its use in 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, which had been in effect since 45 B.C. So the Julian calendar had a good run, over sixteen centuries; but the problem was that it had too many leap years, and this caused the length of a year to be overestimated by about 1/100 of a percent. That doesn’t sound like much, but over time, the calendar year had lost over a week, relative to the number of days that it actually takes for the earth to revolve around the sun. And so when they changed to the new calendar in 1582, they had to jump ahead 11 days, from October 4 to October 11. You thought losing an hour changing to Daylight Savings Time was confusing. Imagine losing a whole week. Interestingly, most Protestant countries did not immediately adopt the Gregorian calendar, as some feared that it was a plot to bring them back under the dominion of the Catholic pope. For example, Great Britain did not begin using it until 1752, 170 years later. And Greece finally adopted it in 1923.

And why do we consider January 1 to be the “beginning” of the year? After all, the earth orbits around the sun continuously. There is no celestial finish line, no point in that great circle that we pass by every year, to signify that one orbit has completed and another orbit has begun. So why does a year “begin” on January 1? Why not start the year in the spring, or the summer? Well, because January was named after the Roman god Janus, the god of transitions, and beginnings and endings. Janus was also the god of gates and doorways. And so January symbolized looking back at the old year and forward to the new. In fact, because of that pagan symbolism, after the fall of Rome, in many Christian parts of the world, the new year was celebrated at other times, such as Easter.

I share all of that with you to make the point that celebrating the New Year on January 1 is somewhat arbitrary. It’s the result of decisions made long ago by Roman emperors and Catholic popes, and it involves a two-faced pagan god who is also the god of gates and doorways. Nevertheless, it’s as good a time as any to take stock of things, to pause and think about our lives and consider whether there are any changes we would like to see in the year to come. You can call this making New Year’s resolutions. That’s traditional. You can call it an annual self-evaluation, although that sounds rather corporate. You can call it taking a look in the mirror. Call it whatever you want. But if we are to grow, and change, and mature as followers of Christ, then this is something we need to be doing on a regular basis. And as I said, the time of year when we hang a new calendar on the wall is as good a time as any.

But before I talk about how we should examine ourselves, I’d like to make a case for why we should do so. Why go to the trouble of comparing where we are spiritually with where we would like to be? What good does that do? Why not just keep doing our best every day? And the reason is that change is hard. We tend to avoid it because it’s uncomfortable. We are also creatures of habit, we tend to stay in our ruts. So unless we are explicitly setting aside time—whether it’s once a year, or once a month, or once a week—unless we are regularly setting aside time to assess our progress in the faith, we probably won’t make progress, or at least not as steadily as we could. So this is your call to do that. Let’s jump in.

So first of all, does God even want us to change? Is it normal, and expected, that our character—our thoughts and attitudes, our speech, and our conduct—should change over time? Is it reasonable to think that we will be different a year from now? Or are we just marking time, doing our best to be good Christians until Christ returns, or until we come to the end of our lives? And the Bible answers that question in the affirmative. Yes, God wants us to grow, and change, and mature. Making progress in the spiritual life is not only possible, but normal and expected. For example:

• It's normal that over time, we should become more joyful, and patient, and kind, and gentle, because those are the fruit of the Spirit, the results of the Spirit’s work in our life (Galatians 5:22-23).