The Only Work I Can Do: Believe on Him

I just love reading and reading this wonderful yet oft-overlooked passage in the Gospel of John:

Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? 29Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. " (John 6: 28-29)

"What shall we do, that we can work the works of God?"

So, the Israelites recognize that they cannot do the works of God yet they still that there is still something -- anything! -- that they can do so that they can start working the work.

Really?

A dead man can do nothing.

We need life, and throughout the Gospel of John, the writer keeps hammering this point about Jesus. He is our life, and His life is our light.

He has come that we would have His life, and that more abundantly.

In John's First Epistle, John keeps communicating this wonderful truth:

"He who has the Son, has life. He who has not the Son, has not life."

So, what really can anyone of us do, that we can start working the works of God?

When are we going to get off our spiritual high horse, and recognize that we were dead in our trespasses, and that we need life!

I don;t need someone to tell me how to live better. We have the standard for how to live, the Ten Commandments, the entire moral law, and guess what?! We cannot keep it at all!

It actually condemns, kills, and destroys! The punishment for not keeping the law? Death!

Really, if we acknowledge what has happened to us in Adam, from the beginning, we acknowledge in turn that we need life!

So, let's get off this idea that we can work for God. That we can serve Him out of anything that we have.

Jesus had to rebuke the Isrealites of His day:

"This is the work of God -- that you believe on Him  -- Jesus -- whom the Father has sent."

How many of us still refuse to believe on Him?

"Oh, I know that Jesus died for me, but I am on my own from here on out.:

Uh? How can you claim to be saved from death to life, and then think that the life you have received is something that you have to work for?

You never earned it in the first place!

Now, the one charge that many church people like to foment falls along these lines:

"So many people are just sitting around doing nothing, saying "I bellieve! I believe!"

The fact is - when someone is talking "I believe" you have to ask them: "What do they believe?"

Most of the time, they will talk about God doing something for them.

Yet God has done far more than something - he has done everything!

He did everything for us at the Cross through His Son Jesus!

The issue -- once again -- comes down to LIFE.

People who are lazy, by the way -- are actually quite busy, in their minds, full of fear.

The truth is, though, that man is dedicated toward doing, doing, doing.

We even "do" in our minds, even if we lie down and do nothing else.

One of the proverbs speaks to the root causes in our minds:

"As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful upon his bed." (Proverbs 26: 14)

Even lazy people are busy, but in their minds, doing nothing but fear and worry.

The more that we get busy resting in His truth, the more that we recognize that our one work is to believe in Jesus.

Jesus is alive, Him who has been from the Beginning!

There is only one work that I can do - which is to believe in Him!

The rest is the grace of God, which He so freely supplies through His Son! (Romans 8: 31-32)