The words on many of our lips today and tomorrow, even as some of you may be leaving the service tonight, will be this familiar greeting: Happy New Year! But what will make the new year, just a few hours away, happy? Will it be a big celebration tonight, watching the ball drop in Times Square? Will it be good times, good health, success, and prosperity in the months to come?
Now let’s move into the spiritual realm. I’m not talking about burning scented candles or practicing yoga. I’m talking about where God the Holy Spirit is the thick of it all. That’s true spirituality. Let’s get to the heart of what makes a new year “happy.”
First, consider the word “happy.” Spiritually speaking, happy means more than fun, laughter, or good times. As we use it tonight, still in the Christmas Season, “happy” includes the peace that we have because Jesus was born to give us that peace and life. Even as time moves us forward into a new year, spiritually speaking, “happy” includes the contentment and confidence that we are in the strong and caring hands of the God who loves us.
Whenever we reach a milestone in our lives, we often look back to reminisce, but also to look ahead to the promise before us. In this New Year’s Eve, when we look back, we see both the good and the bad. We can see love, kindness, and giving of ourselves to help others. Those were good. But we also see anger, selfishness, and words and deeds that have hurt others more than helped them. Those were harmful.
We’ve been in prayer. We’ve been in God’s Word (not just reading His revealed Word, but even receiving the One who is the Word, Jesus Christ). We’ve found our place in the life and work of the Church. That’s good.
But sometimes we’ve let the good that comes from God become empty for us. We confess our sins, saying true words while our minds are far away, somewhere else. We’ve let the good and sound words of our Lord become empty inside us. We’ve let something like the Lord’s Prayer, something that Jesus told His disciples to pray, to become barren of its content, because our hearts were not in it. Our minds have wandered while are lips were speaking Christ’s own words for His disciples.
The problem is not with the words–as if our Lord would give us a defective prayer to pray, or if confessing our sins is in itself an empty ritual. No, the problem is within us. The solution doesn’t lie in changing the words, but in having the words change us. That’s what the Church is–the mouth house of God, where His Word comes to transform us, not the other way around.
After all, we aren’t the people we should be. We aren’t even the Christians we want to be when we are at our best. There’s much in this past year we may regret, for which we need to repent. We find the works of our fallen flesh–envy, jealousy, greed, lust, or hatred, which have marched through our lives, wounding others in its wake. They have even left their mark on us in our thoughts and in the yearnings of our hearts.
With every sin, we have earned, once again, God’s wrath and judgment. But what’s new about that on the cusp of the new year? And like the forgiveness we’ve heard before every Divine Service, the Church’s liturgy has taught us not to think too much of ourselves. It has also taught us not to throw ourselves back onto our good works to be good in God’s eyes.
How can you think that you’re all that, if you have to admit that you are a “poor, miserable” sinner? How can you think that you’re all that, if you have to air your dirty laundry before God? The Church’s liturgy teaches us not to esteem ourselves, to get our sense of worth by what we do, but, instead, by what Jesus does for you. God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Apart from Christ, you’ll either become a bloated, self-important person thinking that you’re something that you’re not–and expecting others to think the same about you! Or, when you see yourself with honest eyes, you will despair. For when you see yourself as God sees you–apart from Christ Jesus–you’ll see blemish, selfish intent, and darkened motives coloring everything you think, say, and do.
So, don’t puff yourself up. But don’t let yourself fall into despair either. The Apostle Paul, in our epistle reading, tells us: “God didn’t even spare His own Son but offered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). If God had to do that to spare you, that means that you couldn’t do that yourself. Deflate your puffed-up ego; you’re not good enough. But if God also had to do that to spare you, then you have no cause to despair, either. For you see Christ in those words of God. Indeed, God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
John the Baptizer cried out, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God’s work of salvation was in progress, even eight days after our Savior’s birth in the first shedding of His blood in His circumcision. On it goes, relentlessly toward the cross, “where the Lord has laid on him the sins of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). In Christ is the answer to your sin. God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Now you can confess your sins and know that, in Christ, God has forgiven you. Your sins can no longer rise to accuse you. God’s Apostle assures you: “Who will accuse those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33). That means the charges against you have been dropped, not by you or another, but by God. Why did God do that? It’s because Christ died to take away your debt of sin. God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
“Who is to condemn?” St. Paul asks. It’s almost as it St. Paul pauses to wait for an answer. No condemnation can stand against God’s judgment. Why not? “[It’s because] Christ has died, and more importantly, has been raised to life. He is at the right hand of God, interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). That’s how the old year is ending; it’s ending in the mercy of God. Indeed, God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
What a happy beginning that makes for the new year! “God didn’t even spare His own Son but offered Him up for us all. How will God not also with him grant us everything?” (Romans 8:32). Surely, we can include, among “everything” this new year, new opportunity, a chance to begin anew.
With God’s blessing and power, the new year will be better than the last. That’s because, by His grace, we can grow in the fruits of the Spirit. We can grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. God gives us grace to say with St. Paul, “This is what I do: Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I strive toward the prize of God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). The new year can be something better!
We know from experience that life is a mix of sorrow and joy, sickness and health, loss and gain, good times and bad times, being up and being down. The new year will, no doubt, be more of the same. The Apostle Paul mentioned affliction and anguish, persecution and hunger, nakedness, danger, and violent death (Romans 8:35). Some of these are spiritual hard times. Some are burdens and cares of the body. And such realities are possible in the new year.
We ask with St. Paul in our text, “What, then, can we say about all of this?” (Romans 8:31). We say this: None of these hard times can take the “happy” out of our new year, for none of the valleys of life can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Listen to our text, “In all these things we are more than conquerors.” Notice that Paul doesn’t say just “conquerors”; no, he says “more than conquerors!” “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). How can that be? Paul continues to tell us.
“I am convinced that not even death or life, angels or demons, the present or the future, not powers or height or depth, or anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans 8:38). St. Paul uses thoughts and phrases, repetition, one after another, to engrave that truth in our hearts and minds–nothing, nothing, nothing, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus! God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Now that opening sentence of our epistle reading rings true: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). Sin can’t be against us. Why not? Jesus died for our sins. We are forgiven. Our sins are gone, as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). The devil can’t prevail against us. Why not? Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
Even the troubles of life can’t get the best of us. Scripture tells us why: “[Cast] all your anxieties on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Death can’t prevail against us. God’s Apostle again gives us these words as our confidence: “Thank God that he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57)!
So, you see, as a saint of God, the “happy” in your new-year greeting centers on Jesus Christ. Tonight, the Holy Spirit, having fed you with the preached Word of Christ, you know that in Him you are forgiven. That means Christ has taken care of your past. He will take care of your future, as well. In Christ, you can look forward to a Happy New Year, no matter what may come! For God holds you in high esteem because of His Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
