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Morning Meditation for Holy Saturday
April 4, 2026
Reading: Romans 8:1-11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
Holy Saturday has often felt to me to be time out of time, a day of suspension and great anticipation. And, so, we wait…Yet Paul is focused so directly on the gifts provided to us through Jesus’ resurrection in this passage. One cannot help but take in the powerful, distinctive - and never to be offered again, nor needed - Love that Paul is calling us to behold. It is something to revel in. to rejoice in, and to offer unending words of thanks and praise.
For many years, I confess, I lived under the condemnation of sin and could not imagine the release and freedom Jesus Christ intended for all God’s children to receive and then to feel the refreshment and joy that God gives through such love. For years I struggled with the tension between my ego, if you will, and God’s immeasurable, unceasing and unconditional love - already at hand awaiting my taking hold of it and dancing with joy. Perhaps there has been a good reason for this burden so prominent in early Christian teaching due to the notion of Adam’s sin resulting in the condemnation for all of humanity.
While the early thinking was that the Law was simply the Torah, but our understanding should include our reckoning with the effects of sin and death. The Torah could not control either, nor could it bring about life. Sin is stronger than the Torah. This stands in direct conflict with the cosmos of Christ and the Spirit. For both are intent on life. Christ’s death overcomes the strictures of the Torah and offers us the opportunity to grasp life fully and to see the beautiful reality of “in Christ.”
Paul so clearly captures the nature of God’s love, manifested in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This love is given its full power and we are invited to have this experience of love so that we might anchor and forge our lives in its power. Paul directs us to consider how our lives become deeply rooted in the Holy Spirit as we come to accept and live into the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, now offering to you and to me a new life in Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, Paul directs us to faith, a faith that places us in Christ Jesus, that is, in our relationship with Christ. This continually invites us into Christ’s very presence. And so we offer more than our consent to what we learn of Christ, more than loyalty to Christ and more than following Christ. This is enabling us to live in Christ.
A blessed Easter to you all.
Closing Prayer
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation: let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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