20 Dec January 1st Daily Devotion

A NEW START

Romans 6:4 “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Did you make your New Years resolution yet?  Its not too late!  What is it you want to change?  What do you want to accomplish in 2025 that you’ve never done before?  Is 2025 going to truly be a new year or will it be just like the one you just finished?

One of the meanings in the dictionary for ‘new” is, “just beginning or beginning anew and regarded as better than what went before. . .”  Do you realize that God sent Jesus to earth to make you new.  St. Paul wrote, “. . . if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ . . . God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them . . . God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19,21)

Martin Luther wrote that your being made new by God is not something that occurs only at the beginning of a new year.  It is, he said, important that “. . . the Old Adam in (you) should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” (Small Catechism, Part IV of What is Baptism)    This new life the Holy Spirit works in you daily through the power of your baptism.

2025 is a New Year.  It is a new year for you to resolve to make changes in your life or to continue to live your life in the way you lived in 2024.  It is a new year in which God, through the work of His Spirit, desires to give you a new life day in and day out through the power of the Gospel, The Lord’s Supper, and your baptism.  Through these means of grace, the Holy Spirit keeps you in faith connected to Jesus Christ.  In Christ you are a new person, reconciled to God as He takes away your sins, in Him you are a righteous child of your heavenly Father.

Prayer:  In Christ, dear God, make me new each day this year.  Amen.

Renew me, O eternal Light,

And let my heart and soul be bright,

Illumined with the light of grace

That issues from Your holy face.

Remove the pow’r of sin from me

And cleanse all my impurity

That I may have the strength and will

Temptations of the flesh to still.

Create in me a new heart, Lord,

That gladly I obey Your Word.

Let what You will be my desire,

And with new life my soul inspire.

Grant that I only You may love

And seek those things which are above

Till I behold You face to face,

O Light eternal, through Your grace.

(LSB 704)