OK, so here we are again: at the end of one year, and looking to step into another one – 2025. Since a recent piece of mine featured 40 quotes on Christmas, and I am still on a bit of a roll, I might as well present to you some key New Year quotes as well.
As we pass from one year to the next, folks often will make a New Year’s resolution. While this is of course not mandatory, it can be said that any time of the year is a good time to resolve to love God more, to be sold out for Jesus, and to make fresh commitments to Christ and the Kingdom.
And this has been the practice of many great saints in the past as they made regular pledges of commitment and devotion to the Lord. Some of these resolutions have been left for us to study, and perhaps emulate. A very famous set of resolutions was made by the great American theologian and preacher, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758).
Here then are 20 quotes about the New Year by 18 authors, most of whom are Christians:
Phillips Brooks
“The only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.”
G. K. Chesterton
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Jonathan Edwards
“Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad’s of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.”
T. S. Eliot
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”
Elisabeth Elliot
“New Year’s Day is a good time to fix one’s eyes on the only One who knows what the year is to hold.”
Jim Elliot
“Happy New Year to each and every one of you… and let me leave you with this: ‘I pray that the Lord might crown this year with His goodness and in the coming one give you a hallowed dare-devil spirit in lifting the biting sword of Truth, consuming you with a passion that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom ‘fanaticism’, but known to God as that saintly madness that led His Son through bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude Cross – and Glory!’”
Sinclair Ferguson
“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.”
Billy Graham
“The most important resolution you can make as another year approaches is this: to open your heart and life to Jesus Christ, and commit your life to Him. Don’t waste your time on resolutions that don’t ultimately matter; resolve instead to live for Christ.”
Martin Luther
“Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth.”
John MacArthur
“If you’d like to have a New Year’s resolution, resolve to be pleasing to the Lord.”
The Apostle Paul
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Arthur Pink
“O to enter this new year with the realization that the one who loved me and gave Himself for me, accompanies me into it! Then why should I fear what may lay ahead of me in 1948? Whatever may be my circumstances, whatever changes I may pass through, whatever I may be called upon to bear—Christ Himself will be my constant companion! But only faith—not imagination or feelings—will be able to realize and appreciate His presence.”
Leonard Ravenhill
“I’m determined this year, more than ever, to know Jesus Christ in a new way such as I have not known Him before. I want to discover His majesty; I want to discover the glory He had with the Father.”
Gordon P. Robertson
“Many of us make New Year’s resolutions. We often fall short. Our goals need to begin with a conversation with Jesus and His desires for us.”
Thomas Sowell
“My favorite New Year’s resolution was to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people. This has reduced both my correspondence and my blood pressure.”
Charles Spurgeon
“I wish, my brothers and sisters, that during this year you may live nearer to Christ than you have ever done before. Depend upon it, it is when we think much of Christ that we think little of ourselves, little of our troubles, and little of the doubts and fears that surround us.”
“Therefore, with earnest tones, I warn you that I bring new responsibilities, from which none of you can escape. For every golden moment you will be held responsible. O stewards of the manifold gifts of God, waste not your strength upon trifles, cast not away your priceless opportunities, fritter not away your precious hours: by the remembrance of eternity, I charge you live with an ardour of industry which will be worthy of remembrance in another world. O child of time, lay not up for thyself misery in the remembrance of misspent years, but live as in the presence of the all-seeing God. Believer in Jesus, gather jewels for his crown, and irradiate his name with glowing honours, so, as I pass away, thy record shall be on high, and thy reward in heaven. FAREWELL.”
A. W. Tozer
“I do not advise that we end the year on a somber note. The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference. Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.”
“For some of us last year was one in which we did not acquit ourselves very nobly as Christians, considering the infinite power available to us through the indwelling Spirit. But through the goodness of God we may go to the school of our failures. The man of illuminated mind will learn from his mistakes, yes even from his sins. If his heart is trusting and penitent, he can be a better man next year for last year’s fault – but let him not return again to folly. Repentance should be radical and thorough, and the best repentance for a wrong act, as Fenelon said, is not to do it again. Charles Wesley called Pharaoh ‘a penitent in vain’ because he repented under the pressure of each plague and went back to sinning as soon as the plague was removed.”
John Wesley
“With regard to my own behavior, I now renewed and wrote down my former resolutions.
To use absolute openness and unreserve with all I should converse with.
To labor after continual seriousness, not willingly indulging myself in any the least levity of behavior, or in laughter; no, not for a moment.
To speak no word which does not tend to the glory of God; in particular, not to talk of worldly things. Others may, nay, must. But what is that to thee? And,
To take no pleasure which does not tend to the glory of God; thanking God every moment for all I do take, and therefore rejecting every sort and degree of it which I feel I cannot so thank Him in and for.”
