Here was the Apostle Paul’s resolution and it is my own new year resolution. Too easily we can become spiritually eccentric — that is, off centre. The focus of the Apostle, and in deed all Scripture, was the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, crucified and risen. What a powerful message: the crucified God.

I want to learn more of Him. To that end I am going to need to read His word, study the cross, and remember the Lord in His appointed way, which is the Sacrament.

I need to let the crucified (and risen) Lord shape my thinking, my values and priorities. Even at their very best, the driving values of humanism are quite different. I cannot afford for my version of Christianity to be mere worldliness dressed up in religious clothing.

I have to present to the church and our society, not religion, or even Christianity, but Christ and Him crucified.