Worship Service on 1/1/2023

A new year begins! Yet, often so little changes. For most, a new year means little difference regarding life, vocation, house, and home. Outside of annually changing one number on our calendar, much of life remains the same, including the daily battles we face against Satan, sin, and our own flesh. With that, we rejoice today not just in the year’s changing, but a daily changing we recognize every day as we live in this world through the blameless One born for us. Christ was under and has fulfilled God’s Law perfectly for us, even as an infant child brought to the temple for circumcision under Mosaic Law. It would mark both the promise of redemption and the burden of the Law—and with Jesus marking the sacrifice that would set us free. Try as we might with new year’s resolutions to become better people, we still find ourselves falling short of God’s moral law that remains today. Rejoice in the newness that has come! More than a new year, we are given a new life, for Christ has fulfilled all and set us free! As we are marked in Baptism and bear Christ’s name, we become inheritors of His promise. It is a newness to celebrate each day of every year!