If you are a Christian, you really need only one New Year’s resolution, and Paul’s will be a great help to you. Especially if you’re a younger Christian or a younger person, 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 here for?”

Today, we’ll explore a text for the new year from one of the Apostle Paul’s letters. You’re probably familiar with it, and perhaps you even know it by heart. But even if you don’t know it, I think you’ll be able to remember it quite easily. It’s Paul’s personal resolution in Philippians 3:10–14:

That I may know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

At the beginning of Philippians, Paul indicates that his young colleague Timothy was with him. Paul often dictated his letters, and I’ve sometimes wondered if he mentions Timothy because he served as his secretary for this letter. It begins with the words “Paul and Timothy,” and I wonder if he gave his son in the faith a slight smile when he told him to write his own name down.

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