Irish Religion, Gods Grace and Ephesians

When I grew up in north Cork,

there was plenty of religion. You know, if you’re Irish, there’s loads of religion in Ireland—but what I didn’t have when I grew up, which I’ve come to know now, is that you can have a relationship with God that is so vastly different from religion. Man‑made religion is a set of do’s and don’ts, it’s a set of rules, and it’s not personal. It’s not engaged with a living God; you’re not in a relationship with the living God. And as I grew up in Cork and started to enter into my adult years, it was then that I wanted to know the truth—real truth, spiritual truth: Who is God? Can I know him? Does he know me? That’s when I came across Jesus, the one I read about in the New Testament in the Bible.

Ephesians

One of the books in the Bible in the New Testament is called the book of Ephesians, and it was written by Paul when he was in jail in Rome. It was written to an Ephesian church, a small church in Ephesus, which is in modern‑day Turkey. The primary purpose of the letter—which is inspired ultimately by the Holy Spirit through the Bible—was to remind the Christians there, to remind those who believed in Jesus Christ, that it was because God had loved them and because God desired to save them and desired to be in a relationship with them that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay for their sins—past, present, and future. This was an amazing revelation to me. It went on to say that God would now become your Father if you believed in Jesus; that God would adopt you into his family; that you would have eternal life. That was such good news, because all I believed before was that, whether you’re religious or not, you just die and that’s the end—and maybe even you go to hell, because I was never good enough to get into heaven.

The Bible says that’s true: it says that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. So as I went about my life in Cork and as a student in UCC, I began to wonder, “Well, how can I get saved? How can I have eternal life? Is this Jesus true? Is he who he says he is?” And to my absolute joy and wonder and amazement, Jesus began to reveal himself to me through the Scriptures as I read the Bible—especially the New Testament. I began to see him, and as I said in this book of Ephesians, I saw the amazing promises of the resurrected Jesus: the fact that Jesus has defeated death, that he didn’t stay in the grave but only stayed there three days, that God raised him from the dead, that he went back—after meeting his disciples for forty days—back into heaven. And the Bible says that in heaven he intercedes for us, that he’s proclaiming and saying to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, “My blood pays for Barry’s sins—past, present, and future.” And that is really good news. As you read through the book of Ephesians, you see that it’s God’s intention in the book that you and I understand the amazing depth of his love, the height and the width and the breadth of this amazing love.

God speaks about his grace

and grace is something that’s given to people who don’t deserve it. We don’t deserve God’s grace; I don’t deserve God’s grace. It was given to me because of God’s kindness and mercy and love. Yet you also see his justice in this: that sin has to be punished, that my sin has to be paid for, and your sin has to be paid for. This is a spiritual truth; this is something grounded in the very personality and in the heart of God—that there has to be justice. So how can God both forgive and also uphold justice? We see it at the cross, because what God says and what he wants us to understand is that there has to be payment for sin. So Jesus paid for that sin with his blood; he died a brutal and horrible death. And now, instead, he can forgive you and me. There is an exchange, as it were: your sin, my sin, all the wrongdoings—every thought, every action that’s wicked and evil—is put onto Christ, and God punishes Jesus. So the cross shows the punishment of sin in Christ, and yet it also shows the love and mercy of God in Christ. For Jesus now says, “I give my righteousness, my perfect moral character, to those who believe in me—anyone who believes in me.” So Jesus has given his perfect moral character to Barry Condon, and I just have to believe in him. I have to repent of my sin, of my sinful life, my life of living in independence from the most high God, the Holy One of Israel, the one who is from everlasting to everlasting. And he has revealed himself to me, and he says, “Anyone who seeks him will find him.” So if you seek God, you will find him. Don’t take my word for it; call out to God, pray to God, ask God about Jesus. I guarantee you 100 percent that Jesus will reveal himself to you. Jesus reveals himself to people all over the world; he’s saving people in Cork, he’s saving people in Ireland, he’s saving people all over the world. This is the gospel. It’s good news. It’s relational: by the power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we can come to know the living God.

Jesus our only Hope 

Ephesians is such a wonderful book. It speaks about, as I mentioned earlier, God’s amazing grace. And if we understand the grace of God, we will then be eternally grateful. Because you see, in the eyes of God and according to the word of God, every one of us deserves condemnation. Every one of us has been handed over to sin and under the rule of Satan. Every one of us falls short of his glory. Therefore, in ourselves, we are without hope in this world; we are dead in our sins and transgressions. And when we start from that point, we realize that we are hopeless—that all the religion, and all our own efforts, are filthy rags before God and mean nothing to God in terms of earning salvation. We cannot earn our salvation; we cannot merit it in any way, shape, or form. When you go to work, whether in Bailey’s Garage, Bailey’s Hay, Carragher Line, or Cork city, you go to work and you earn your wages, and you’re paid because you’ve earned them. God says you cannot earn eternal life; you cannot earn your salvation; you cannot earn it. Someone else has to do it for you—and Jesus has done it for you. He has earned salvation for you. That’s God’s grace: unmerited favor. The Scripture says in Ephesians, “It is by grace you have been saved through faith—not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, so that no one may boast.” Listen to it again: “It is by grace you have been saved through faith.” God’s grace—God initiated your salvation; he enabled you to turn and to believe in the name of Jesus Christ. So God is saying, “It’s by his grace you can be saved, through faith in Jesus.” It’s not faith in yourself, or in your church, or in anybody else, but it has to be faith in Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son, his one and only Son. It will be by grace that you’ve been saved, through faith—not of yourselves—it is the gift of God, so that no man may boast. Hallelujah! No one can stand before God in heaven and say, “I deserve it because I did such and such.”

No—we all say, “Thank you for the blood of Jesus. Thank you for the Son of God. Praise your name, oh God, you are a Savior, a great Savior.” This is essentially what the book of Ephesians is about: God’s amazing grace and the power he has given us to live the Christian life. And then he goes on to give instruction about how to live that Christian life—and there are upwards of 40+ instructions in the book about living the Christian life. But it’s done from a place of love now: now that I’m saved, now that I’m born again, I want to obey Jesus; I want to follow him; I want to put his word into practice. It’s not coming from a place of legalism, or rules, or regulations, or fear, or “I must do this,” or “no.” It’s “Lord, thank you so much. No—I want to live like you. I want to imitate Jesus. I’m going to live like Jesus lives.”

That’s how the book of Ephesians works itself out. It covers families and marriages and covers how to deal with the powers and principles in the evil realm. We pray; we pray and we pray; we put on the full armor of God and we stand in God’s strength and not in our own strength. Because the reality is—even if you don’t believe it—this world is a materialistic world, but the Bible says clearly there are powers and rulers and principalities of darkness in the unseen realm. There are lots of things that exist today that we don’t see and yet we believe in, such as gravity or the wind—but there’s also the unseen spiritual realm, and there are forces of wickedness in that unseen realm. They want to destroy you, but Jesus Christ is stronger. He is the highest name above every name, and the Bible says that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

My prayer today is that the church in Cork, and all the churches in Cork, would be like the church in Ephesus: having a burning desire for the love of Jesus, and a desire to know him more, to know him more, to mature in the knowledge of Jesus, to grow up in their faith, and to be productive and fruitful for the Lord—in Cork, in Ireland.