We have our sentiments about what a Happy New Year means . The poster shows what it usually entails. We seek happiness and the Gospel frees us from that slavery. We want adulation and the Gospel frees us from that as well.
Martin Franzmann wrote about all these things on THE CHRISTIAN HOPE AND OUR FELLOW MAN . In this section he is talking about the Letter of James and the notations follow. He said,
We are free, too, from the pressure of prestige, our own or others; we have become, like Paul, capable of counting it dung (Phil. 3: 8). Our Lord Jesus, the Lord of Glory, has drawn a fat, black, and never-to-be-erased line between us, His Diaspora, and the shoving, shouldering, and scrambling world: “It is not so among you” (Matt. 20:26); for the Son of Man came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. The way of glory is the downward way of ministry and self-giving. We receive the Word in meekness, in that confident dependence upon God which credits Him with the ability to read His own calendar and the will to set wrong right in His time and in His way without the self assertion of our loud and angry mouths (1:21,26). Wisdom does its work of mercy in meekness (3: 13 ), .the largeness of its hope makes it large and noble of heart, a princely virtue (3: 17 ) . We see men, rich and poor, black, yellow, and white, with God’s eyes, not with the eyes of self; fawning on the great and contempt for the shabby and honorless both melt away before the rising sun of the Christian hope (2: 1-13 ). Our boasting ceases; the chest-thumping master of his fate and captain of his soul is heard no more (4: 16) – for greatness lies in hope, in submittal wholly and willingly to Him who will exalt us all (4:7-10).
