The beginning of a New Year: time to take stock, reflect on the year that’s just gone, and put away the mince pies in favour of gym shoes.

But is it really worth making New Year’s Resolutions, especially for Christians in light of the Gospel? Are New Year’s Resolutions just legalism, or can we use them to help us become more like Jesus?

Here are eight ways to make the most of New Year’s Resolutions…

1. Don’t make resolutions out of obligation

There’s nothing in the Bible that mentions New Year’s Resolutions! Don’t feel pressured into making them just because other people are. But feel free to use NYRs if you find them helpful in becoming a better person.

2. Don’t make resolutions to manage guilt

Often we make resolutions to deal with guilt – if we feel guilty about overindulging, we resolve to go on a diet to try and make us feel better, for example. But when we break our resolutions, we end up feeling even worse!

3. Don’t make resolutions to feel superior to other people

Often our resolutions carry hidden addenda: “I want to be fit and healthy… like that person”. “I want to be more productive at work… than my rival in the office”. “I want to know the Bible better… than the other people in my church cell group”. While there’s nothing wrong with being inspired by good examples around us, we need to guard against the cycle of pride and jealousy that comes from comparing ourselves and showing off to others.

4. Don’t make resolutions to impress God

If you’re a Christian, then you can feel the pressure to impress not only other people, but also the Almighty himself. Are you running around frantically trying to please God by volunteering enough, giving enough, campaigning enough, praying enough, reading the Bible enough? Relax. What God thinks of you isn’t down to your performance.

5. Resolve because you’re already loved and forgiven

The Bible tells us that if you are trusting Jesus, you are already loved as much by the Father as he loves his own Son. You are united to Christ – he takes away all your guilt, and gives you all his goodness. This liberates us from making resolutions out of obligation, pride, fear or self-justification, and allows us to just get on with doing good simply out of love.

6. Resolve because God’s Spirit is at work in you

If we’re already completely loved and forgiven, why bother to make any resolutions at all? If we’re united to Christ, then we’re already in the process of being made like him by the Holy Spirit at work in us. Personal transformation is part and parcel of that. When our resolutions are motivated by God’s love in u, and enabled by his Spirit, making resolutions to do good is both worthwhile and achievable.

7. Resolve to do good to others

Too often our resolutions are focused solely on self-improvement. Going to the gym more often or spending less on takeaway are fine as far as they go. But the Gospel gives us a bigger vision: making us like Jesus, whose purpose was self-giving rather than self-fulfilment. How can you be pouring yourself out in love for your friends, family, colleagues? How can you seek justice for those in your neighbourhood and around the world? How can you show mercy, just as Christ has shown mercy to you?

8. Resolve to know God better

The Good News that the Bible proclaims is that we can come to know and love the God who loves us. Spending time with God isn’t something we have to do, but that we get to do. But like any relationship, we need to work at it. Perhaps we can make no better resolution in 2015 than to say with Paul in Philippians 3:10-12:

“I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”