Resolution, Reckoning and the Hidden Life

…reckon…yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:11

Many of our New Year’s resolutions will have been forgotten by now. January fuels the determination that things will be different this time. But experience is cruel. The former patterns tend to reassert themselves. .
Yet Scripture requires that we ‘reckon.’ We class reckoning and resolution as similar if not identical things. The word ‘reckon’ is from an older translation. More modern versions translate the original Greek with words like ‘consider’. Still, the older term is better.
The command to reckon is the first command in the book of Romans. Scripture never calls us to mindless activism. Truth must supply a motive for effort. And truth must be ascertained. The great Apostle establishes the foundational truth for this reckoning through five chapters and ten verses.
That truth as expounded by Paul has to do with the Death and Resurrection of the Holy One. The death of Christ is a cosmic event with personal consequences. Time, eternity, and the universe itself are all permanently changed by the death of God’s Son. By Christ’s death, death is slain, disarmed, its terror voided. Through His Resurrection our own life is elevated above an animal existence, invested with a purpose which would have been impossible had the sinless Savior disintegrated in His grave.
Resolution is like reckoning in that it expresses the intention that real change be effected. Yet there remain differences between biblical reckoning and our normal approach to resolution.
1. Resolution is usually self-regarding. Reckoning requires a concentration on Christ and His achievement.
2. Resolution is the determination that change must take place. Reckoning is the recognition that change has taken place.
3. Resolution looks mainly toward the future. Reckoning is ever conscious of the past. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem the Son of God died to break sin’s power. The Cross is the focus of reckoning. Resolution hopes for a new reality. Reckoning flows from a new reality
4. Resolution is the attempt to attain a goal. Reckoning is the appropriation of a fact.
5. Resolution succeeds by human will. Reckoning advances by faith.
Christianity is very much an interior phenomenon. Jesus declared such when He denounced anger in addition to murder, lust in addition to adultery. God’s demand for purity in the inward life defined Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees. If a cup is dirty on the inside it matters little if the outside is washed. Repentance, belief, joy and reckoning are all functions of an inward consciousness.
Over 30 years ago an obscure author named Miles Stanford (1914-99) wrote a spiritual life trilogy first published privately. The last of the three (after ‘The Principle of Position’ and ‘The Green Letters’) was called ‘The Reckoning that Counts.’ The little book (get it if you can) was an exposition of the Romans 6:11 theme. I regard it as a minor classic. There is a current obsession with making ministry ‘work’ through technique. Ought there not to be a prior concern with making the Christian life work –seeing that life lived out practically as prescribed by the Lord and His Apostles? When we say “lived out practically” we mean obedience: consistent, self-denying, joyous.
In the end “success” will be defined by God Himself.
When we understand that definition we can be sure it will have to do with what is happening on the inside, with what Scripture calls ‘the heart’.
Let us give ourselves to the cultivation of those interior spaces.
Let us resolve to reckon.