Lent Meditation: Day 19 - March 8, 2026

📖 Scripture Verse

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 death. — Romans 8:1-2

🕯️Meditation

In the earlier chapters of Romans, Paul has laid out his theological understanding of the frailty, faults, and failures of humankind.  All those who are descended from the first human, Adam have found themselves the inheritors of what one commentary calls “a legacy of doom.”  This is Paul’s basic understanding of the human condition.  Created by a loving God, yet having fallen into broken state through sin, and now subject to sin and death.  The bondage that humanity experiences is expressed in our tendency to sin, to live in alienation from God, and to act in ways that bring harm to ourselves and others.  Paul is deeply convinced of the loving faithfulness of the God of Israel.  Paul the Jew, Paul the Pharisee has read the scriptures so deeply that he knows and trusts that God would not abandon his creation to such a situation.  Paul was transformed by an encounter with Jesus, where he came to understand him as the fulfillment of Israel’s scriptures.  In Christ, God has opened a path for a restored humanity.  It is the Spirit of God which is a law more profound and fundamental than any law of sin, death, and condemnation.  This Spirit of life brings freedom for those who are in Christ Jesus.

To be “in Christ” is to be in a new ecology, we are no longer subject to the environment of sin and death, but an environment that allows for the moral and ethical growth and transformation in holiness that its the walk of the Christian life.  Look at Romans 12 to learn more about what the liberation in Christ proclaimed in 8:1 leads.

🙏 Prayer

Holy Spirit, when I am in Christ, you set me free for larger life.  Teach me to walk and grow in the way of Jesus, and to rejoice with gratitude in the freedom you give me from the ways of sin and death. Amen.

Walk through Lent with us. Sign up to receive a daily meditation from Father Ethan delivered directly to your inbox.