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Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
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The “they” that Jesus was speaking to is the crowd that had been fed by the miracle of the five loaves of bread and two fish with twelve baskets left over. {Jn.6:10-13} Having now experienced the power of God to bless them they want to have the ability to do that for themselves. Bear in mind that Jesus had just said that they were following Him because they ate and were filled!

While we are promised incredible and wonderful blessings for hearing and obeying the Lord, including having a blessed ‘basket and kneading bowl, our food’ {Deut.28:1-14}, the greatest gift is the desire and the ability to know and obey Him. As the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, it is God who is at work in a believer to will and to work for His good pleasure. {Php.2:13} Without faith it is impossible to please God {Heb.12.2} so I thank the Lord I don’t have to work to get it. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. {Gal.5:22}

When it comes to fruit it is the tree, not the fruit itself, that does the work! I am put in mind of Jesus saying, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” {Jn.15:5} Which of course takes us right back to today’s verses. What can we do to do the works of God—nothing! We should rejoice that we are being cultivated, nurtured and grown by the One who has suffered and died in our place that we might have eternal life because of the grace and mercy of the Father who gave His Son to pay the price for all of our failings, our sins.

When Paul and Silas were jailed in Philippi—illegally by the way— as they prayed and sang praises the Lord shook the earth to free them from their chains and opened the prison cells to save them. {Acts 16} The jailer fearing the punishment he would face for their escape and planning to kill himself, asked Paul what he could do to be saved. He had seen the fruit of believing in Jesus! The response was simply, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus.’

It was the answer then, it is the answer now. The answer is always Jesus and the work that He has done. Otherwise known as faith. Let the world see His glory in your trust!

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11:1-3)

BELIEVE IN THE LORD AND BE SAVED