I had an unusual experience after hearing a sermon. The subject was on believing in God and doing His works. I was so conflicted by what I heard that I went to the Lord seeking some resolution. And, during the night, He responded to my prayer.
The two go together: the quality of our belief in God reflects itself in the quality of the works that follow. The sermon suggested that believing in God cannot give us the grace we need to do God’s works. We are familiar with the saying, “Faith without works is dead.” On the other hand, Jesus spoke about the relationship between works and belief in John 6:25-29:
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
It’s interesting that the people asked about the works of God, plural. Jesus replied, “This is the work of God.” One work. It seems that all other works that fall in the category of “God’s works” are the outworking of this one work: belief. And it is not even a work that we do, because it is the work of God. It is a work that we allow God to perform in us.
Jesus elaborated on belief later in the same chapter, verses 35-37 and 47-58:
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Here is where the discrepancy between my understanding of belief and the one advanced by the sermon I heard was resolved. I came to see that the effort we put into the eating and drinking, in a spiritual sense, the body and blood of Jesus—internalizing his life, finding in him the source of life—is the difference between superficial belief and true belief. True belief is not merely a mental assent. It is coming to him (verses 35 and 37) as he came down to us (verse 51). It is an active process, opening ourselves to God’s creating belief in us.
Not only is belief the first of His works, it creates a new kind of life in us called “eternal life.” Once a rich young ruler asking Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” But even though he had obeyed all the commandments in the law of Moses, he could not accept the work that Jesus offered to him. Obeying the law cannot impart eternal life, only an active belief in Jesus that assimilates his life.
One more verse, John 3:21. “Whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in Christ.” Or, as another translation has it, “But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see God at work in what they are doing.”
This closing quote comes from the book Glorying in the Lord by T. Austin-Sparks. It sums up the insight that brought me peace that night.
The Lord would teach us – and this is the lesson that my heart is bent upon learning, and that I would urge upon you to make your quest also–that the ground of assurance is not in our having decided for Christ, nor that we persist in the Christian life, nor that we feel strong, nor that we have certain ability as Christians and are able to do this or that. It is not the measure of our activity in the work of the Lord, nor any one of these things which constitutes our Christian life. These are simply the outworkings. The thing which constitutes us is that Christ is the foundation, and that we are inseparably linked with Him by faith. Everything else can be suspended as a secondary consideration until that is settled. It is as though God, if we may put it this way to try to simplify the truth, had given us His Son and had said to us: “In Him you have everything, and the first thing is not what you are, what you can do, or anything to do with you; it is what He is!” If only in the face of all you may see of a multitude of contradictions in your own life in weaknesses, and imperfections, and lack of attainment, you will persistently believe in Him as having it in Himself to bring you through to the end, you will go through in spite of all.