John 6:28

Whether this conference was with the Capernaites, in whose synagogue Christ now was, or with those who came from the other side of the sea, is not certain nor material; however, it is an instance of Christ's condescension that he gave them leave to ask him questions, and did not resent the interruption as an affront, no, not from his common hearers, though not his immediate followers. Those that would be apt to teach must be swift to hear, and study to answer. It is the wisdom of teachers, when they are asked even impertinent unprofitable questions, thence to take occasion to answer in that which is profitable, that the question may be rejected, but not the request. Now,

I. Christ having told them that they must work for the meat he spoke of, must labour for it, they enquire what work they must do, and he answers them, Joh 6:28, Joh 6:29. 1. Their enquiry was pertinent enough (Joh 6:28): What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? Some understand it as a pert question: "What works of God can we do more and better than those we do in obedience to the law of Moses?" But I rather take it as a humble serious question, showing them to be, at least for the present, in a good mind, and willing to know and do their duty; and I imagine that those who asked this question, How and What (Joh 6:30), and made the request (Joh 6:34), were not the same persons with those that murmured (Joh 6:41, Joh 6:42), and strove (Joh 6:52), for those are expressly called the Jews, who came out of Judea (for those were strictly called Jews) to cavil, whereas these were of Galilee, and came to be taught. This question here intimates that they were convinced that those who would obtain this everlasting meat, (1.) Must aim to do something great. Those who look high in their expectations, and hope to enjoy the glory of God, must aim high in those endeavours, and study to do the works of God, works which he requires and will accept, works of God, distinguished from the works of worldly men in their worldly pursuits. It is not enough to speak the words of God, but we must do the works of God. (2.) Must be willing to do any thing: What shall we do? Lord, I am ready to do whatever thou shalt appoint, though ever so displeasing to flesh and blood, Act 9:6. 2. Christ's answer was plain enough (Joh 6:29): This is the work of God that ye believe. Note, (1.) The work of faith is the work of God. They enquire after the works of God (in the plural number), being careful about many things; but Christ directs them to one work, which includes all, the one thing needful: that you believe, which supersedes all the works of the ceremonial law; the work which is necessary to the acceptance of all the other works, and which produces them, for without faith you cannot please God. It is God's work, for it is of his working in us, it subjects the soul to his working on us, and quickens the soul in working for him, (2.) That faith is the work of God which closes with Christ, and relies upon him. It is to believe on him as one whom God hath sent, as God's commissioner in the great affair of peace between God and man, and as such to rest upon him, and resign ourselves to him. See Joh 14:1.

II. Christ having told them that the Son of man would give them this meat, they enquire concerning him, and he answers their enquiry.

1. Their enquiry is after a sign (Joh 6:30): What sign showest thou? Thus far they were right, that, since he required them to give him credit, he should produce his credentials, and make it out by miracle that he was sent of God. Moses having confirmed his mission by signs, it was requisite that Christ, who came to set aside the ceremonial law, should in like manner confirm his: "What dost thou work? What doest thou drive at? What lasting characters of a divine power does thou design to leave upon thy doctrine?" But herein they missed it,

(1.) That they overlooked the many miracles which they had seen wrought by him, and which amounted to an abundant proof of his divine mission. Is this a time of day to ask, "What sign showest thou?" especially at Capernaum, the staple of miracles, where he had done so many mighty works, signs so significant of his office and undertaking? Were not these very persons but the other day miraculously fed by him? None so blind as they that will not see; for they may be so blind as to question whether it be day or no, when the sun shines in their faces.

(2.) That they preferred the miraculous feeding of Israel in the wilderness before all the miracles Christ wrought (Joh 6:31): Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; and, to strengthen the objection, they quote a scripture for it: He gave them bread from heaven (taken from Psa 78:24), he gave them of the corn of heaven. What a good use might be made of this story to which they here refer! It was a memorable instance of God's power and goodness, often mentioned to the glory of God (Neh 9:20, Neh 9:21), yet see how these people perverted it, and made an ill use of it. [1.] Christ reproved them for their fondness of the miraculous bread, and bade them not set their hearts upon meat which perisheth; "Why," say they, "meat for the belly was the great good thing that God gave to our fathers in the desert; and why should not we then labour for that meat? If God made much of them, why should not we be for those that will make much of us?" [2.] Christ had fed five thousand men with five loaves, and had given them that as one sign to prove him sent of God; but, under colour of magnifying the miracles of Moses, they tacitly undervalue this miracle of Christ, and evade the evidence of it. "Christ fed his thousands; but Moses his hundreds of thousands; Christ fed them but once, and then reproved those who followed him in hope to be still fed, and put them off with a discourse of spiritual food; but Moses fed his followers forty years, and miracles were not their rarities, but their daily bread: Christ fed them with bread out of the earth, barley-bread, and fishes out of the sea; but Moses fed Israel with bread from heaven, angel's food." Thus big did these Jews talk of the manna which their fathers did eat; but their fathers had slighted it as much as they did now the barley-loaves, and called light bread, Num 21:5. Thus apt are we to slight and overlook the appearances of God's power and grace in our own times, while we pretend to admire the wonders of which our fathers told us. Suppose this miracle of Christ was outdone by that of Moses, yet there were other instances in which Christ's miracles outshone his; and, besides, all true miracles prove a divine doctrine, though not equally illustrious in the circumstances, which were ever diversified according as the occasion did require. As much as the manna excelled the barley-loaves, so much, and much more, did the doctrine of Christ excel the law of Moses, and his heavenly institutions the carnal ordinances of that dispensation.

2. Here is Christ's reply to this enquiry, wherein,

(1.) He rectifies their mistake concerning the typical manna. It was true that their fathers did eat manna in the desert. But, [1.] It was not Moses that gave it to them, nor were they obliged to him for it; he was but the instrument, and therefore they must look beyond him to God. We do not find that Moses did so much as pray to God for the manna; and he spoke unadvisedly when he said, Must we fetch water out of the rock? Moses gave them not either that bread or that water. [2.] It was not given them, as they imagined, from heaven, from the highest heavens, but only from the clouds, and therefore not so much superior to that which had its rise from the earth as they thought. Because the scripture saith, He gave them bread from heaven, it does not follow that it was heavenly bread, or was intended to be the nourishment of souls. Misunderstanding scripture language occasions many mistakes in the things of God.

(2.) He informs them concerning the true manna, of which that was a type: But my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven; that which is truly and properly the bread from heaven, of which the manna was but a shadow and figure, is now given, not to your fathers, who are dead and gone, but to you of this present age, for whom the better things were reserved: he is now giving you that bread from heaven, which is truly so called. As much as the throne of God's glory is above the clouds of the air, so much does the spiritual bread of the everlasting gospel excel the manna. In calling God his Father, he proclaims himself greater than Moses; for Moses was faithful but as a servant, Christ as a Son, Heb 3:5, Heb 3:6.

III. Christ, having replied to their enquiries, takes further occasion from their objection concerning the manna to discourse of himself under the similitude of bread, and of believing under the similitude of eating and drinking; to which, together with his putting both together in the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, and with the remarks made upon it by the hearers, the rest of this conference may be reduced.

1. Christ having spoken of himself as the great gift of God, and the true bread (Joh 6:32), largely explains and confirms this, that we may rightly know him.

(1.) He here shows that he is the true bread; this he repeats again and again, Joh 6:33, Joh 6:35, Joh 6:48-51. Observe, [1.] That Christ is bread is that to the soul which bread is to the body, nourishes and supports the spiritual life (is the staff of it) as bread does the bodily life; it is the staff of life. The doctrines of the gospel concerning Christ - that he is the mediator between God and man, that he is our peace, our righteousness, our Redeemer; by these things do men live. Our bodies could better live without food than our souls without Christ. Bread-corn is bruised (Isa 28:28), so was Christ; he was born at Bethlehem, the house of bread, and typified by the show-bread. [2.] That he is the bread of God (Joh 6:33), divine bread; it is he that is of God (Joh 6:46), bread which my Father gives (Joh 6:32), which he has made to be the food of our souls; the bread of God's family, his children's bread. The Levitical sacrifices are called the bread of God (Lev 21:21, Lev 21:22), and Christ is the great sacrifice; Christ, in his word and ordinances, the feast upon the sacrifice. [3.] That he is the bread of life (Joh 6:35, and again, Joh 6:48), that bread of life, alluding to the tree of life in the midst of the garden of Eden, which was to Adam the seal of that part of the covenant, Do this and live, of which he might eat and live. Christ is the bread of life, for he is the fruit of the tree of life. First, He is the living bread (so he explains himself, Joh 6:51): I am the living bread. Bread is itself a dead thing, and nourishes not but by the help of the faculties of a living body; but Christ is himself living bread, and nourishes by his own power. Manna was a dead thing; if kept but one night, it putrefied and bred worms; but Christ is ever living, everlasting bread, that never moulds, nor waxes old. The doctrine of Christ crucified is now as strengthening and comforting to a believer as ever it was, and his mediation still of as much value and efficacy as ever. Secondly, He gives life unto the world (Joh 6:33), spiritual and eternal life; the life of the soul in union and communion with God here, and in the vision and fruition of him hereafter; a life that includes in it all happiness. The manna did only reserve and support life, did not preserve and perpetuate life, much less restore it; but Christ gives life to those that were dead in sin. The manna was ordained only for the life of the Israelites, but Christ is given for the life of the world; none are excluded from the benefit of this bread, but such as exclude themselves. Christ came to put life into the minds of men, principles productive of acceptable performances. [4.] That he is the bread which came down from heaven; this is often repeated here, Joh 6:33, Joh 6:50, Joh 6:51, Joh 6:58. This denotes, First, The divinity of Christ's person. As God, he had a being in heaven, whence he came to take our nature upon him: I came down from heaven, whence we may infer his antiquity, he was in the beginning with God; his ability, for heaven is the firmament of power; and his authority, he came with a divine commission. Secondly, The divine original of all that good which flows to us through him. He comes, not only katabas - that came down (Joh 6:51), but katabainōi - that comes down; he is descending, denoting a constant communication of light, life, and love, from God to believers through Christ, as the manna descended daily; see Eph 1:3. Omnia desuper - All things from above. [5.] That he is that bread of which the manna was a type and figure (Joh 6:58), that bread, the true bread, Joh 6:32. As the rock that they drank of was Christ, so was the manna they ate of spiritual bread, Co1 10:3, Co1 10:4. Manna was given to Israel; so Christ to the spiritual Israel. There was manna enough for them all; so in Christ a fulness of grace for all believers; he that gathers much of this manna will have none to spare when he comes to use it; and he that gathers little, when his grace comes to be perfected in glory, shall find that he has no lack. Manna was to be gathered in the morning; and those that would find Christ must seek him early. Manna was sweet, and, as the author of the Wisdom of Solomon tells us (Wisd. 16:20), was agreeable to every palate; and to those that believe Christ is precious. Israel lived upon manna till they came to Canaan; and Christ is our life. There was a memorial of the manna preserved in the ark; so of Christ in the Lord's supper, as the food of souls.

(2.) He here shows what his undertaking was, and what his errand into the world. Laying aside the metaphor, he speaks plainly, and speaks no proverb, giving us an account of his business among men, Joh 6:38-40.

[1.] He assures us, in general, that he came from heaven upon his Father's business (Joh 6:38), not do his own will, but the will of him that sent him. He came from heaven, which bespeaks him an intelligent active being, who voluntarily descended to this lower world, a long journey, and a great step downward, considering the glories of the world he came from and the calamities of the world he came to; we may well ask with wonder, "What moved him to such an expedition?" Here he tells that he came to do, not his own will, but the will of his Father; not that he had any will that stood in competition with the will of his Father, but those to whom he spoke suspected he might. "No," saith he, "my own will is not the spring I act fRom. nor the rule I go by, but I am come to do the will of him that sent me." That is, First, Christ did not come into the world as a private person, that acts for himself only, but under a public character, to act for others as an ambassador, or plenipotentiary, authorized by a public commission; he came into the world as God's great agent and the world's great physician. It was not any private business that brought him hither, but he came to settle affairs between parties no less considerable than the great Creator and the whole creation. Secondly, Christ, when he was in the world, did not carry on any private design, nor had any separate interest at all, distinct from theirs for whom he acted. The scope of his whole life was to glorify God and do good to men. He therefore never consulted his own ease, safety, or quiet; but, when he was to lay down his life, though he had a human nature which startled at it, he set aside the consideration of that, and resolved his will as man into the will of God: Not as I will, but as thou wilt.

[2.] He acquaints us, in particular, with that will of the Father which he came to do; he here declares the decree, the instructions he was to pursue.

First, The private instructions given to Christ, that he should be sure to save all the chosen remnant; and this is the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son (Joh 6:38): "This is the Father's will, who hath sent me; this is the charge I am entrusted with, that of all whom he hath given me I should lose none." Note, 1. There is a certain number of the children of men given by the Father to Jesus Christ, to be his care, and so to be to him for a name and a praise; given him for an inheritance, for a possession. Let him do all that for them which their case requires; teach them, and heal them, pay their debt, and plead their cause, prepare them for, and preserve them to, eternal life, and then let him make his best of them. The Father might dispose of them as he pleased: as creatures, their lives and beings were derived from him; as sinners, their lives and beings were forfeited to him. He might have sold them for the satisfaction of his justice, and delivered them to the tormentors; but he pitched upon them to be the monuments of his mercy, and delivered them to the Saviour. Those whom God chose to be the objects of his special love he lodged as a trust in the hands of Christ. 2. Jesus Christ has undertaken that he will lose none of those that were thus given him of the Father. The many sons whom he was to bring to glory shall all be forth-coming, and none of them missing, Mat 18:14. None of them shall be lost, for want of a sufficient grace to sanctify them. If I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame for ever, Gen 43:9. 3. Christ's undertaking for those that are given him extends to the resurrection of their bodies. I will raise it up again at the last day, which supposes all that goes before, but this is to crown and complete the undertaking. The body is a part of the man, and therefore a part of Christ's purchase and charge; it pertains to the promises, and therefore it shall not be lost. The undertaking is not only that he shall lose none, no person, but that he shall lose nothing, no part of the person, and therefore not the body. Christ's undertaking will never be accomplished till the resurrection, when the souls and bodies of the saints shall be re-united and gathered to Christ, that he may present them to the Father: Behold I, and the children that thou has given me, Heb 2:13; Ti2 1:12. 4. The spring and original of all this is the sovereign will of God, the counsels of his will, according to which he works all this. This was the commandment he gave to his Son, when he sent him into the world, and to which the Son always had an eye.

Secondly, The public instructions which were to be given to the children of men, in what way, and upon what terms, they might obtain salvation by Christ; and this is the covenant of grace between God and man. Who the particular persons were that were given to Christ is a secret: The Lord knows them that are his, we do not, nor is it fit we should; but, though their names are concealed, their characters are published. An offer is made of life and happiness upon gospel terms, that by it those that were given to Christ might be brought to him, and others left inexcusable (Joh 6:40): "This is the will, the revealed will, of him that sent me, the method agreed upon, upon which to proceed with the children of men, that every one, Jew or Gentile, that sees the Son, and believes on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up." This is gospel indeed, good news. Is it now reviving to hear this? 1. That eternal life may be had, if it be not our own fault; that whereas, upon the sin of the first Adam, the way of the tree of life was blocked up, by the grace of the second Adam it is laid upon again. The crown of glory is set before us as the prize of our high calling, which we may run for and obtain. 2. Every one may have it. This gospel is to be preached, this offer made, to all, and none can say, "It belongs not to me," Rev 22:17. 3. This everlasting life is sure to all those who believe in Christ, and to them only. He that sees the Son, and believes on him, shall be saved. Some understand this seeing as a limitation of this condition of salvation to those only that have the revelation of Christ and his grace made to them. Every one that has the opportunity of being acquainted with Christ, and improves this so well as to believe in him, shall have everlasting life, so that none shall be condemned for unbelief (however they maybe for other sins) but those who have had the gospel preached to them, who, like these Jews here (Joh 6:36), have seen, and yet have not believed; have known Christ, and yet not trusted in him. But I rather understand seeing here to mean the same thing with believing, for it is theōrōn, which signifies not so much the sight of the eye (as Joh 6:36, heōrakate me - ye have seen me) as the contemplation of the mind. Every one that sees the Son, that is, believes on him, sees him with an eye of faith, by which we come to be duly acquainted and affected with the doctrine of the gospel concerning him. It is to look upon him, as the stung Israelites upon the brazen serpent. It is not a blind faith that Christ requires, that we should be willing to have our eyes put out, and then follow him, but that we should see him, and see what ground we go upon in our faith. It is then right when it is not taken up upon hearsay (believing as the church believes), but is the result of a due consideration of, and insight into, the motives of credibility: Now mine eye sees thee. We have heard him ourselves. 4. Those who believe in Jesus Christ, in order to their having everlasting life, shall be raised up by his power at the last day. He had it in charge as his Father's will (Joh 6:39), and here he solemnly makes it his own undertaking: I will raise him up, which signifies not only the return of the body to life, but the putting of the whole man into a full possession of the eternal life promised.

2. Now Christ discoursing thus concerning himself, as the bread of life that came down from heaven, let us see what remarks his hearers made upon it.

(1.) When they heard of such a thing as the bread of God, which gives life, they heartily prayed for it (Joh 6:34): Lord, evermore give us this bread. I cannot think that this is spoken scoffingly, and in a way of derision, as most interpreters understand it: "Give us such bread as this, if thou canst; let us be fed with it, not for one meal, as with the five loaves, but evermore;" as if this were no better a prayer than that of the impenitent thief: If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us. But I take this request to be made, though ignorantly, yet honestly, and to be well meant; for they call him Lord, and desire a share in what he gives, whatever he means by it. General and confused notions of divine things produce in carnal hearts some kind of desires towards them, and wishes of them; like Balaam's wish, to die the death of the righteous. Those who have an indistinct knowledge of the things of God, who see men as trees walking, make, as I may call them, inarticulate prayers for spiritual blessings. They think the favour of God a good thing, and heaven a fine place, and cannot but wish them their own, while they have no value nor desire at all for that holiness which is necessary both to the one and to the other. Let this be the desire of our souls; have we tasted that the Lord is gracious, been feasted with the word of God, and Christ in the word? Let us say, "Lord, evermore give us this bread; let the bread of life be our daily bread, the heavenly manna our continual feast, and let us never know the want of it."

(2.) But, when they understood that by this bread of life Jesus meant himself, then they despised it. Whether they were the same persons that had prayed for it (Joh 6:34), or some others of the company, does not appear; it seems to be some others, for they are called Jews. Now it is said (Joh 6:41), They murmured at him. This comes in immediately after that solemn declaration which Christ had made of God's will and his own undertaking concerning man's salvation (Joh 6:39, Joh 6:40), which certainly were some of the most weighty and gracious words that ever proceeded out of the mouth of our Lord Jesus, the most faithful, and best worthy of all acceptation. One would think that, like Israel in Egypt, when they heard that God had thus visited them, they should have bowed their heads and worshipped; but on the contrary, instead of closing with the offer made them, they murmured, quarrelled with what Christ said, and, though they did not openly oppose and contradict it, yet they privately whispered among themselves in contempt of it, and instilled into one another's minds prejudices against it. Many that will not professedly contradict the doctrine of Christ (their cavils are so weak and groundless that they are either ashamed to own them or afraid to have them silenced), yet say in their hearts that they do not like it. Now, [1.] That which offended them was Christ's asserting his origin to be from heaven, Joh 6:41, Joh 6:42. How is it that he saith, I came down from heaven? They had heard of angels coming down from heaven, but never of a man, overlooking the proofs he had given them of his being more than a man. [2.] That which they thought justified them herein was that they knew his extraction on earth: Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? They took it amiss that he should say that he came down from heaven, when he was one of them. They speak slightly of his blessed name, Jesus: Is not this Jesus. They take it for granted that Joseph was really his father, though he was only reputed to be so. Note, Mistakes concerning the person of Christ, as if he were a mere man, conceived and born by ordinary generation, occasion the offence that is taken at his doctrine and offices. Those who set him on a level with the other sons of men, whose father and mother we know, no wonder if they derogate from the honour of his satisfaction and the mysteries of his undertaking, and, like the Jews here, murmur at his promise to raise us up at the last day.

3. Christ, having spoken of faith as the great work of God (Joh 6:29), discourses largely concerning this work, instructing and encouraging us in it.

(1.) He shows what it is to believe in Christ. [1.] To believe in Christ is to come to Christ. He that comes to me is the same with him that believes in me (Joh 6:35), and again (Joh 6:37): He that comes unto me; so Joh 6:44, Joh 6:45. Repentance towards God is coming to him (Jer 3:22) as our chief good and highest end; and so faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ is coming to him as our prince and Saviour, and our way to the Father. It denotes the out-goings of our affection towards him, for these are the motions of the soul, and actions agreeable; it is to come off from all those things that stand in opposition to him or competition with him, and to come up to those terms upon which life and salvation are offered to us through him. When he was here on earth it was more that barely coming where he was; so it is now more than coming to his word and ordinances. [2.] It is to feed upon Christ (Joh 6:51): If any man eat of this bread. The former denotes applying ourselves to Christ; this denotes applying Christ to ourselves, with appetite and delight, that we may receive life, and strength, and comfort from him. To feed on him as the Israelites on the manna, having quitted the fleshpots of Egypt, and not depending on the labour of their hands (to eat of that), but living purely on the bread given them from heaven.

(2.) He shows what is to be got by believing in Christ. What will he give us if we come to him? What shall we be the better of we feed upon him? Want and death are the chief things we dread; may we but be assured of the comforts of our being, and the continuance of it in the midst of these comforts, we have enough; now these two are here secured to true believers.

[1.] They shall never want, never hunger, never thirst, Joh 6:35. Desires they have, earnest desires, but these so suitably, so seasonably, so abundantly satisfied, that they cannot be called hunger and thirst, which are uneasy and painful. Those that did eat manna, and drink of the rock, hungered and thirsted afterwards. Manna surfeited them; water out of the rock failed them. But there is such an over-flowing fulness in Christ as can never be exhausted, and there are such ever-flowing communications from him as can never be interrupted.

[2.] They shall never die, not die eternally; for, First, He that believes on Christ has everlasting life (Joh 6:47); he has the assurance of it, the grant of it, the earnest of it; he has it in the promise and first-fruits. Union with Christ and communion with God in Christ are everlasting life begun. Secondly, Whereas they that did eat manna died, Christ is such bread as a man may eat of and never die, Joh 6:49, Joh 6:50. Observe here, 1. The insufficiency of the typical manna: Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. There may be much good use made of the death of our fathers; their graves speak to us, and their monuments are our memorials, particularly of this, that the greatest plenty of the most dainty food will neither prolong the thread of life nor avert the stroke of death. Those that did eat manna, angel's food, died like other men. There could be nothing amiss in their diet, to shorten their days, nor could their deaths be hastened by the toils and fatigues of life (for they neither sowed nor reaped), and yet they died. (1.) Many of them died by the immediate strokes of God's vengeance for their unbelief and murmurings; for, though they did eat that spiritual meat, yet with many of them God was not well-pleased, but they were overthrown in the wilderness, Co1 10:3-5. Their eating manna was no security to them from the wrath of God, as believing in Christ is to us. (2.) The rest of them died in a course of nature, and their carcases fell, under a divine sentence, in that wilderness where they did eat manna. In that very age when miracles were daily bread was the life of man reduced to the stint it now stands at, as appears, Psa 90:10. Let them not then boast so much of manna. 2. The all-sufficiency of the true manna, of which the other was a type: This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that truly divine and heavenly food, that a man may eat thereof and not die; that is, not fall under the wrath of God, which is killing to the soul; not die the second death; no, nor the first death finally and irrecoverably. Not die, that is, not perish, not come short of the heavenly Canaan, as the Israelites did of the earthly, for want of faith, though they had manna. This is further explained by that promise in the next words: If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever, Joh 6:51. This is the meaning of this never dying: though he go down to death, he shall pass through it to that world where there shall be no more death. To live for ever is not to be for ever (the damned in hell shall be for ever, the soul of man was made for an endless state), but to be happy for ever. And because the body must needs die, and be as water spilt upon the ground, Christ here undertakes for the gathering of that up too (as before, Joh 6:44, I will raise him up at the last day); and even that shall live for ever.

(3.) He shows what encouragements we have to believe in Christ. Christ here speaks of some who had seen him and yet believed not, Joh 6:36. They saw his person and miracles, and heard him preach, and yet were not wrought upon to believe in him. Faith is not always the effect of sight; the soldiers were eye-witnesses of his resurrection, and yet, instead of believing in him, they belied him; so that it is a difficult thing to bring people to believe in Christ: and, by the operation of the Spirit of grace, those that have not seen have yet believed. Two things we are here assured of, to encourage our faith: -

[1.] That the Son will bid all those welcome that come to him (Joh 6:37): Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. How welcome should this word be to our souls which bids us welcome to Christ! Him that cometh; it is in the singular number, denoting favour, not only to the body of believers in general, but to every particular soul that applies itself to Christ. Here, First, The duty required is a pure gospel duty: to come to Christ, that we may come to God by him. His beauty and love, those great attractives, must draw us to him; sense of need and fear of danger must drive us to him; any thing to bring us to Christ. Secondly, The promise is a pure gospel promise: I will in no wise cast out - ou mē ekbagō exō. There are two negatives: I

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh_6:28-29

Then they said unto Him, what shall we do that we might work the works of God

Synagogue questioning

I.

THE SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE AND UNBELIEF OF THE NATURAL MAN.

1. When our Lord bade His hearers, Labour for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, they began to think of works to be done.

2. When He spoke of Himself as one sent of God and the need of faith in them, the response was, What sign showest Thou? and this directly after the miracle (Mar_6:6).

3. We should remember all this in our efforts to do good and not be discouraged if our words seem thrown away.

II. THE HIGH HONOUR WHICH CHRIST PUTS ON FAITH IN HIMSELF. Faith and works elsewhere seem contrasted, but here Christ declares that believing on Him is the greatest of all works. Not that He meant that there was anything meritorious in believing; but--That it is the act of the soul which specially pleases God. Without it it is impossible to please Him.

2. That it is the first act that God requires at a sinners hands.

3. That there is no life in a man till he believes.

III. THE FAR GREATER PRIVILEGES OF CHRISTS HEARERS THAN OF THOSE WHO LIVED IN THE TIMES OF MOSES. The manna, wonderful as it was, was as nothing compared with the true bread.

1. The one could only feed the body; the other could satisfy the soul.

2. The one was only for the benefit of Israel; the other for the whole world.

3. Those who ate the former died and were buried, and many of them lost for ever; those who ate of the latter would be eternally saved. (Bp. Ryle.)

A plain answer to an important inquiry

I. FAITH IS THE COMPREHENSIVE SUMMARY OF ALL TRUE WORK.

1. There lies within it every form of holiness, as a forest may lie within an acorn. It may be microscopic in form, but it only wants development.

2. All the graces come out of faith (see Heb_11:1-40.).

II. FAITH IS IN ITSELF MOST PLEASING TO GOD. Because

1. It is the creature acknowledging its God. The man who says my own good deeds will save me sets himself up in independency of God. But when a man submits himself to Gods way of salvation, the rebellious heart submits to the Divine authority, and the poor erring creature comes into its right place.

2. It accepts Gods way of reconciliation. It thus shows a deference to Gods wisdom, and confidence in His love, and yielding to His will.

3. It puts honour on Christ whom the Father dearly loves. That which dishonours Christ must be obnoxious to God.

4. It puts us in a right relationship with God, i.e

(1) A relationship of dependence;

(2) of child- like rest.

III. FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST. IS THE TEST OF WORKING FOR GOD.

1. Without faith the spirit of work is wrong. Suppose you said to me, I will spend my life in your service, but I am not going to believe what you say. All that you do must be destitute of real excellent because you begin by malting God a liar in not trusting Him (1Jn_5:10).

2. Without faith the motive of work fails and becomes selfish; whereas faith aims at Gods glory.

IV. FAITH IS THE SEAL OF ALL OTHER BLESSINGS.

1. Of our election (Joh_6:37). If you believe in Christ you are one that the Father hath given Him.

2. Of our effectual calling. If you believe the Father hath drawn you to Christ.

3. Of our final perseverance (Joh_6:47).

4. Of our resurrection (Joh_6:39; Joh_6:49), (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The peoples question

Faith and works are both factors in the work of salvation. Faith is the life root of which works are the fruit. The Jew sought to justify himself by his works, and then inferentially organized his faith to work the works of God, with Him was to drive a bargain with God. What good thing must I do? Christ shows that the way to the Father was by no such circuitous route, but by faith in Himself.

I. A GRAVE INQUIRY. This is not a Jewish question. It is the question of humanity.

1. Man has never been able to throw off a belief in God nor to escape the apprehensions such a belief creates. Hence, in their unrest and great mental hunger, men still ask this question.

2. You see evidences of this mental disquietude in the breaking away from the restraints of creeds, in retreats from the simplicity of the present into the traditions of the past; in the rush of various systems of mediatorial penance, in the impossibility of successfully impugning the Divine record and in the despair which ensues on its rejection. Philosophy in its wildest departures from God can neither answer this question nor escape the responsibility of discussing it. Men seem to treat it as a scoff, but they arc compelled to do homage to its impressiveness in the vague worship of the unknown.

II. CHRISTS ANSWER.

1. The work of God is not the alone work of Gods appointing. It is God and man mutually working. A fractured relation of the soul and God necessitates for its readjustment the correlation of two forces.

(1) In this work a factor is demanded that we cannot supply. A man can receive nothing except it be given him from above. That which our working secures is just the willingness to receive what God alone can give.

(2) The want that goes in quest of God is not Gods work but ours. On the other hand, to pacify the disquieted heart by renewing it is not mans work, but Gods. Our first lesson, therefore, touches the pride of our self-sufficiency. We are powerless with all our power when power is needed most.

(3) Then there are things which we must cease to do. We must cease to do evil, get clean away from all dependence on our own works.

2. The work of man.

(1) To believe in Christs mission. Christ claims to have been sent into the world by the Father to perform a specific work. Miracles were His credentials. His own profound self-consciousness of His mission explains and necessitates this supernatural signature. Now, if Jesus believed Himself to be the Sent and the Son of God, and was not, He was deceived and a deceiver; but if He was, we cannot put ourselves into harmony with God otherwise than as we accept this mission.

(2) Accepting the mission. What does a man do when he believes in the Person of Christ? What does a blind man do when he commits himself to a guide? He puts himself out on trust. A drowning man, when he clings to his plank, lives suspensively on that to which he clings. A penitent sinner, when he believes in Christ, does both. And this is the work of God for all men. (John Burton.)

The work of God

There was nothing peculiar about this question. All men are asking it, some listlessly, some with agonizing importunity. There is much implied in it; amongst other things that there is some alienation between God and man which must be removed. Unfallen angels do not ask it.

I. MANS WAY OF ANSWERING THE QUESTION.

1. One man imagines that the works of God are to be performed by the members of the body, by prayers, genuflexions, etc. The result is that the man blinded goes down to death, or he is forced by experience to own that he has not found what he sought and to turn away from externals, still saying, What shall I do? etc.

2. The next stage he reaches is that of substituting moral for ceremonial acts. Hence the constant disposition to make social charities the test of character, and to establish an order of irreligious saints. In this delusion thousands live and die. But to others, goaded by conscience, this is not enough. We have tried to do right, but we find our good works imperfect and marred by the sins that have run side by side with them. What shall we do? etc.

3. The man has now been brought to the necessity of expiation. He must make good his past failures by working the works of God. But where shall he begin? Perhaps by refraining from sin. This unexpected difficulty drives him to repentance. He will weep over his offences. But he finds that he can no more break his heart than change his life. The sinner, abandoning the impossible effort, asks in despair, What shall I do?

4. This is the highest ground man ever reached by himself. If he goes beyond he goes down.

(1) Some accordingly descend to the lower ground of meritorious abstinence and self-mortification. Because they have not been able to appease God by renouncing sinful pleasures, they will now do it by renouncing innocent enjoyments.

(2) A descent in another direction leads to a desperate transfer of responsibility. As the sinner cannot work the works of God himself, the Church or a priest shall do it for him.

II. CHRISTS WAY. The whole point here is the contrast between believing and working. They would not have been surprised had He enjoined some task. To a self-righteous spirit, difficulty, danger, pain are inducements rather than dissuasives; but a requisition to believe on Him was something different, comprehending as it did a belief of His Divine legation and authority, of His ability and willingness to save, and a full consent to be saved by Him.

1. It was this simple and implicit trust that created the difficulty, and the same feeling of incongruity is experienced now. After spending a lifetime in working out my own salvation, must I be told at last that I have only to believe?

2. Let this reluctance subside, and men will ask in what sense faith is the work of God.

(1) Some have taught that the act of believing is meritorious, and is accepted in lieu of all the rest. But how can this be reconciled with Gods justice?

(2) Men have run to the opposite extreme, and held that faith dispenses with all moral obligation, which is at variance with the constant requisition of obedience.

3. The true meaning of the words may be summed up in two particulars.

(1) Our access to God and restoration to His favour are entirely independent of all merit or obedience on our part. The saving benefit of the atonement is freely offered to us. Unreserved acceptance of it must, of course, exclude all reliance on any merit of our own. This is all we have to do to begin with.

(2) We are saved, not in sin, but from sin, and when belief in Christ is represented as the saving work which God requires, it is not to the exclusion of good works, but rather the source from which they flow. (J. Addison Alexander, D. D.)

Faith and its operations

I. FAITH IS HERE CONSIDERED AS THE WORK WHICH GOD ENJOINS IN EVERY INDIVIDUAL. Why is it that men do not believe the testimony which God has so clearly made?

1. A wilful turning aside from God and a determination to take up with the nearest trifle is one reason.

2. The deceitfulness of the human heart is another. Sin possesses in a most astonishing degree the faculty of hiding its own deformity.

3. The reasons of this disobedience vary in different men according to their different characters and circumstances.

4. What does the Holy Spirit do when He introduces the principle of faith into the heart of man?

(1) He removes every obstacle which we cherished in our natural state.

(2) He fixes in us principles of obedience, and makes duty a delight.

5. What is this faith? A continual reliance on Christ as a Saviour. 6 What does this faith do? It delivers the believer from the charge and dominion of sin and purifies the heart.

II. GODS SENDING HIS SON INTO THE WORLD.

1. This was an act of sovereignty.

2. Christ was sent as the medium of Gods moral government and as the channel of salvation.

3. What a view this gives us of the mercy and love of God!

4. How this heightens the guilt of the rejection of Christ!

III. THIS OBEDIENCE OF FAITH IS THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE DESIGN OF GOD AND THE COMPLETION OF THE SAVIOURS TRIUMPH. (W. Howels, M. A.)

Faith the sole saving act

1. The Jews inquired as though there were several works of God. Christ narrows down the terms of salvation to a single one.

2. In this as in many incidental ways our Lord teaches His Divinity. Imagine Paul or David resting the destiny of the soul on faith in himself.

3. The belief is natural to man that something must be done in order to salvation. The most supine expect to have to rouse themselves some day. Let us examine

I. THE COMMON NOTION UNDERLYING THE QUESTION. When a man begins to think of God and his relations to Him, he finds he owes Him service and obedience. His first spontaneous impulse, therefore, is to begin the performance of the work he has hitherto neglected. The law expressly affirms that the man who doeth these things shall live by them. He proposes to take the law just as it stands and to live by service.

II. THE GROUND AND REASON OF CHRISTS ANSWER.

1. Because it is too late in any case to adopt the method of salvation by works. The law demands and supposes that obedience begins at the very beginning of existence, and continues down uninterruptedly to the end of it Gal_5:3). If any man can show a clean record, the law gives him the reward he has earned (Rom_4:4; Rom_11:6). But no man can do this Psa_58:3; Eph_2:3).

2. This is the conclusive ground for Christs declaration that the one great work which every fallen man must perform in order to salvation is faith in another work.

III. THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION BY FAITH.

1. Faith is a work, a mental act of the most comprehensive and energetic species. It carries the whole man in it, heart, head, will, body, soul, spirit.

2. Yet it is not a work in the common signification, and is by Paul opposed to works, and excluded from them. It is wholly occupied with anothers work. The believer deserts all his own doings, and betakes himself to what a third person has done for him, and instead of holding up prayers, almsgiving, penances, or moral efforts, he holds up the sacrificial work of Christ.

3. St. John repeats this doctrine in his first epistle (1Jn_3:22-23). The whole duty of sinful man is here summed up and concentrated in the duty to trust in another person than himself and in another work than his own. In the matter of salvation, when there is faith in Christ there is everything; and where there is not faith in Christ there is nothing.

Conclusion:

1. Faith in Christ is the appointment of God as the sole means of salvation Act_4:12).

2. There are enjoyments in the human conscience that can be supplied by no other method.

(1) The soul wants peace. Christs atonement satisfies the demands of a broken law.

(2) The soul wants purity. The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. (Prof. Shedd.)

Faith and works

All upon which the name of Paulinism has been bestowed is contained in embryo in this verse, which at the same time forms the point of union between Paul and James. Faith is the highest kind of work, for by it man gives himself; and a free being can do nothing greater than to give himself. It is in this sense that James opposes works to a faith which is nothing more than intellectual belief; and it is in a perfectly analogous sense that Paul opposes faith, active faith, to works of mere observance. The faith of Paul is really the works of James, according to the sovereign formula of Jesus: This is the work of God that you believe. (F. Godet, D. D.)

The value of faith

Faith will be of more use to us than any other grace, as an eye, though dim, was of more use to an Israelite (bitten by a serpent) than all the other members of his body. It is not knowledge, though angelical, nor repentance, though we could shed rivers of tears, could justify us; but only faith, whereby we look on Christ. (T. Watson.)

Works are useless for our salvation

Coin that is current in one place is valueless in another. Suppose an Indian, far in the western wilds, were to say, I will become a trader with the whites. I will go to New York city and buy up half the goods there, and then come back and sell them, and then what a rich Indian I shall be. He then collects all his wampum beads, which are his money, and compared with other Indians he is very rich, and away he journeys to yonder city. Imagine him going into Stewarts, and offering his wampum there in exchange for their goods. They are refused. They were money in the woods--in the city they are worthless. And there are thousands of men who are carrying with them, to offer at the judgment, what is no better than the Indians beads. They are reckoning on their generosity, their prompt payment of all their debts, their various good natural qualities; but when they present them, they will all be found worthless trash. The things that have made them strong, and valued, and important here, will there be worse than useless to them. (H. W. Beecher.)

Faith is trust in another

The daughter of a celebrated physician was once attacked by a violent and dangerous fever; but she exhibited great resignation and tranquillity. She said she was ignorant of what might effect her cure, and if it were left to herself to prescribe, she might desire remedies which would be prejudicial. Shall I not gain everything, she added, by abandoning myself entirely to my father? He desires my recovery; he knows much better than I do what is adapted to the restoration of my health; and having confidence, therefore, that everything will be done for me which can be done, I remain without solicitude either as to the means or aa to the result. Religious faith, in like manner, trusts itself in the hands of God, in the full confidence that it will be well in the end. (J. Upham.)

The preciousness of faith

Faith is the vital artery of the soul. When we begin to believe we begin to love. Faith grafts the soul into Christ as the scion into the stock, and fetches all its nutriment from the blessed vine. (T. Watson.)

Faith and works

That is a very instructive anecdote which St. Simon relates respecting the last hours of the profligate Louis XIV. One day, he says, the king, recovering from loss of consciousness, asked his confessor, Pere Tellier, to give him absolution for all his sins. Pere Tellier asked him if he suffered much. No, replied the king, thats what troubles me. I should like to suffer more, for the expiation of my sins? Here was a poor mortal who had spent his days in carnality and transgression of the pure law of God. He is conscious of guilt, and feels the need of its atonement. And now, upon the very edge of eternity and brink of doom, he proposes to make his own atonement, to be his own redeemer and save his own soul, by offering up to the eternal Nemesis that was racking his conscience a few hours of finite suffering, instead of betaking himself to the infinite passion and agony of Calvary. This is a work; and, alas I a dead work, as St. Paul so often denominates it. (Prof. Shedd.)

Faith in God

In the first Punic war, Hannibal laid siege to Saguntum, a rich and strongly-fortified city on the eastern coast of Spain. It was defended with a desperate obstinacy by its inhabitants; but the discipline, the energy, and the persistence of the Carthaginian army were too much for them; and, just as the city was about to fall, Alorcus, a Spanish chieftain, and a mutual friend of both the contending parties, undertook to mediate between them. He proposed to the Saguntines that they should surrender, allowing the Carthaginian general to make his own terms; and the argument he used was this: Your city is captured, in any event. Further resistence will only bring down upon you the rage of an incensed soldiery, and horrors of a sack. Therefore surrender immediately, and take whatever Hannibal shall please to give. You cannot lose anything by the procedure, and you may gain something, even though it be a little. Now, although there is no resemblance between the government of the good and merciful God and the cruel purposes and conduct of a heathen warrior, and we shrink from bringing the two into any kind of juxtaposition, still, the advice of the wise Alorcus to the Saguntines is good advice for every sinful man in reference to his relations to eternal justice. We are all of us at the mercy of God. But the All.Holy is also the All-Merciful. He has made certain terms, and has offered certain conditions of pardon, without asking leave of His creatures, and without taking them into council; and were these terms as strict as Draco, instead of being as tender and pitiful as the tears and blood of Jesus, it would become us criminals to make no criticisms even in that extreme case, but accept them precisely as they were offered by the Sovereign and the Arbiter. (Prof. Shedd.)

The simplicity of faith

The complexity sometimes charged upon the Christian doctrine of faith is not greater than exists in any analogous or corresponding case. Tell the drowning man to be of good cheer, for you will save him, and you call upon him to perform as many acts as are included in the exercise of saving faith. For, in the first place, you invite him to believe the truth of your assertions. In the next place, you invite him to confide in your ability and willingness to save him. In the last place, you invite him to consent to your proposal by renouncing every other hope and agreeing to be saved by you. There is nothing more abstruse or difficult in saving faith. The difference is not in the essential nature of the mental acts and exercises, but in the circumstances under which they are performed. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

Creed and conduct

It is a very common charge against Christianity that it puts creed above conduct. Whether there is any truth in that charge depends upon what is understood by the term creed. When Jesus was asked directly concerning right conduct, he answered that a right belief is the basis of right conduct. If that be giving a first place to creed, let it be borne in mind that it is Jesus Christ Himself who makes the assignment. A popular saying nowadays is that it doesnt make any difference what a man believes if he only acts right; but a Boston clergyman once improved on that saying by the simple change, It doesnt make any difference what a man believes if he doesnt act right. If a man is a persistent evil-doer, the soundness of his theological convictions will not compensate for his wrong conduct. But when God has sent His Son to be a Saviour and a Guide, it makes all the difference in the world whether a sinner accepts or refuses to believe on the One who is the only Mediator between God and man. So far, a correct belief is all-essential as a basis of right conduct and of safe conduct. That is the truth as Jesus puts it. (H. C. Trumbull, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 6:28-29. Then said they — Desiring to appear willing to receive his instructions, as well as his bounties; What shall we do that we may work the works of God? — Works pleasing to God, so as to secure his favour, and eternal life. Jesus answered, This is the work of God — The work most pleasing to God, and the foundation of all others; that ye believe on him whom he hath sent — That you acknowledge him for the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, (Joh 20:31; 1Jn 4:14-15;) that you credit and obey his doctrine; rely, for acceptance with God, on his mediation; apply to him for, and receive, his pardoning and renewing grace. See on Joh 3:16-19. Thus our Lord calls them to a work they never thought of; the owning him to be the true Messiah; the receiving him as such, and trusting in him for salvation, present and eternal, which was necessary, notwithstanding all their acts of obedience to the law, whether moral or ceremonial.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John

HOW TO WORK THE WORK OF GOD

Joh 6:28 - Joh 6:29.

The feeding of the five thousand was the most ‘popular’ of Christ’s miracles. The Evangelist tells us, with something between a smile and a sigh, that ‘when the people saw it, they said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world,’ and they were so delighted with Him and with it, that they wanted to get up an insurrection on the spot, and make a King of Him. I wonder if there are any of that sort of people left. If two men were to come into Manchester to-morrow morning, and one of them were to offer material good, and the other wisdom and peace of heart, which of them, do you think, would have the larger following? We need not cast a stone at the unblushing, frank admiration that these men had for a Prophet who could feed them, for that is exactly the sort of prophet that a great number of us would like best if they spoke out.

So Jesus Christ had to escape from the inconvenient enthusiasm of these mistaken admirers of His; and they followed Him in their eagerness, but were met with words which lift them into another region and damp their zeal. He tries to turn away their thoughts from the miracle to a far loftier gift. He contrasts the trouble which they willingly took in order to get a meal with their indifference as to obtaining the true bread from heaven, and He bids them work for it just as they had shown themselves ready to work for the other.

They put to Him this question of my text, so strangely blending as it does right and wrong, ‘You have bid us work; tell us how to work? What must we do that we may work the works of God?’ Christ answers, in words that illuminate their confusions and clear the whole matter, ‘This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.’

I. Faith, then, is a work.

You know that the commonplace of evangelical teaching opposes faith to works; and the opposition is perfectly correct, if it be rightly understood. But I have a strong impression that a great deal of our preaching goes clean over the heads of our hearers, because we take for granted, and they fancy that they understand, the meaning of terms because the terms themselves are so familiar. And I believe that many people go to churches and chapels all their lives long, and hear this doctrine dinned into them, that they are to be saved by faith, and not by works, and never approach a definite understanding of what it means.

So let me just for a moment try to clear up the terms of this apparently paradoxical statement that faith is a work. What do we mean by faith? What do you mean by saying that you have faith in your friend, in your wife, in your husband, in your guide? You simply mean, and we mean, that you trust the person, grasping him by the act of trust. On trust the whole fabric of human society depends, as well as in another aspect of the same expression does the whole fabric of Manchester commerce. Faith, confidence, the leaning of myself on one discerned to be true, trusty, strong, sufficient for the purpose in hand, whatever it may be-that, and nothing more mysterious, nothing further away from daily life and the common emotions which knit us to one another, is, as I take it, what the New Testament means when it insists upon faith.

Ah, we all exercise it. You put it forth in certain low levels and directions. ‘The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her,’ is the short summary of the happy lives of many, I have no doubt, of my present hearers. Have you none of that confidence to spare for God? Is it all meant to be poured out upon weak, fallible, changeful creatures like ourselves, and none of it to rise to the One in whom absolute confidence may eternally be fixed?

But then, of course, as we may see by the exercise of the same emotion in regard to one Another, the under side {as I have been accustomed to say to you} of this confidence in God or Christ is diffidence of myself. There is no real exercise of confidence which does not involve, as an essential part of itself, the going out from myself in order that I may lay all the weight and the responsibility of the matter in hand upon Him in whom I trust. And so Christian faith is compounded of these two elements, or rather, it has these two sides which correspond to one another. The same figure is convex or concave according as you look at it from one side or another. If you look at faith from one side, it rises towards God; if from the other, it hollows itself out into a great emptiness. And so the under side of faith is distrust; and he that puts his confidence in God thereby goes out of himself, and declares that in himself there is nothing to rest upon.

Now that two-sided confidence and diffidence, trust and distrust, which are one, is truly a work. It is not an easy one either; it is the exercise of our own inmost nature. It is an effort of will. It has to be done by coercing ourselves. It has to be maintained in the face of many temptations and difficulties. The contrast between faith and work is between an inward act and a crowd of outward performances. But the faith which knits me to God is my act, and I am responsible for it.

But yet it is not a work, just because it is a ceasing from my own works, and going out from myself that He may enter in. Only remember, when we say, ‘Not by works of righteousness, but by the faith of Christ,’ we are but proclaiming that the inward man must exercise that act of self-abnegation and confession of its own impotence, and ceasing from all reliance on anything which it does, whereby, and whereby alone, it can be knit to God. ‘Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto eternal life . . . . This is the work of God, that ye believe.’ You are responsible for doing that, or for not doing it.

II. Secondly, faith, and not a multitude of separate acts, is what pleases God.

Mark the difference between the form of the question and that of the answer. The people say, ‘What are we to do that we may work the works of God?’ Christ answers in the singular: ‘This is the work.’ They thought of a great variety of observances and deeds. He gathers them all up into one. They thought of a pile, and that the higher it rose the more likely they were to be accepted. He unified the requirement, and He brought it all down to this one act, in which all other acts are included, and on which alone the whole weight of a man’s salvation is to rest. ‘What shall we do that we might work the works of God?’ is a question asked in all sorts of ways, by the hearts of men all round about us; and what a babble of answers comes! The priest says, ‘Rites and ceremonies.’ The thinker says, ‘Culture, education.’ The moralist says, ‘Do this, that, and the other thing,’ and enumerates a whole series of separate acts. Jesus Christ says, ‘One thing is needful . . . . This is the work of God.’ He brushes away the sacerdotal answer and the answer of the mere moralist, and He says, ‘No! Not do; but trust.’ In so far as that is act, it is the only act that you need.

That is evidently reasonable. The man is more than his work; motive is more important than action; character is deeper than conduct. God is pleased, not by what men do, but by what men are. We must be first, and then we shall do. And it is obviously reasonable, because we can find analogies to the requirement in all other relations of life. What would you care for a child that scrupulously obeyed, and did not love or trust? What would a prince think of a subject who was ostentatious in acts of loyalty, and all the while was plotting and nurturing treason in his heart?

If doing separate acts of righteousness be the way to work the works of God, then no man has ever done them. For it is a plain fact that every man falls below his own conscience-which conscience is less scrupulous than the divine law. The worst of us knows a great deal more than the best of us does; and our lives, universally, are, at the best, lives of partial effort after unreached attainments of obedience and of virtue.

But, even supposing that we could perform, far more completely than we do, the requirements of our own consciences, and conform to the evident duties of our position and relations, do you think that without faith we should be therein working the works of God? Suppose a man were able fully to realise his own ideal of goodness, without any confidence in God underlying all his acts; do you think that these would be acts that would please God? It seems to me that, however lovely and worthy of admiration, looked at with human eyes only, many lives are, which have nobly and resolutely fought against evil, and struggled after good, if they have lacked the crowning grace of doing this for God’s sake, they lack, I was going to say, almost everything; I will not say that, but I will say that they lack that which makes them acceptable, well-pleasing to Him. The poorest, the most imperfect realisation of our duty and ideal of conduct which has in it a love towards God and a faith in Him that would fain do better if it could, is a nobler thing, I venture to say, in the eyes of Heaven-which are the truth-seeing eyes-than the noblest achievements of an untrusting soul. It does not seem to me that to say so is bigotry or narrowness or anything else but the plain deduction from this, that a man’s relation to God is the deepest thing about him, and that if that be right, other things will come right, and if that be wrong nothing is as right as it might be.

Here we have Jesus Christ laying the foundation for the doctrine which is often said to be Pauline, as if that meant something else than coming from Jesus Christ. We often hear people say, ‘Oh, your evangelical teaching of justification by faith, and all that, comes out of Paul’s Epistles, not out of Christ’s teaching, nor out of John’s Gospel.’ Well, there is a difference, which it is blindness not to recognise, between the seeds of teaching in our Lord’s words, and the flowers and fruit of these seeds, which we get in the more systematised and developed teaching of the Epistles. I frankly admit that, and I should expect it, with my belief as to who Christ is, and who Paul is. But in that saying, ‘This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent,’ is the germ of everything that Paul has taught us about the works of the law being of no avail, and faith being alone and unfailing in its power of uniting men to God, and bringing them into the possession of eternal life. The saying stands in John’s Gospel, and so Paul and John alike received, though in different fashions, and wrought out on different lines of subsequent teaching, the germinal impulse from these words of the Master. Let us hear no more about salvation by faith being a Pauline addition to Christ’s Gospel, for the lips of Christ Himself have declared ‘this is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.’

III. Thirdly, this faith is the productive parent of all separate works of God.

The teaching that I have been trying to enforce has, I know, been so presented as to make a pillow for indolence, and to be closely allied to immorality. It has been so presented, but it has not been so presented half as often as its enemies would have us believe. For I know of but very few, and those by no means the most prominent and powerful of the preachers of the great doctrine of salvation by faith, who have not added, as its greatest teacher did: ‘Let ours also be careful to maintain good works for necessary uses.’ But the true teaching is not that trust is a substitute for work, but that it is the foundation of work. The Gospel is, first of all, Trust; then, set yourselves to do the works of faith. It works by love, it is the opening of the heart to the entrance of the life of Christ, and, of course, when that life comes in, it will act in the man in a manner appropriate to its origin and source, and he that by faith has been joined to Jesus Christ, and has opened his heart to receive into that heart the life of Christ, will, as a matter of course, bring forth, in the measure of his faith, the fruits of righteousness.

We are surely not despising fruits and flowers when we insist upon the root from which they shall come. A man may take separate acts of partial goodness, as you see children in the springtime sticking daisies on the spikes of a thorn-twig picked from the hedges. But these will die. The basis of all righteousness is faith, and the manifestation of faith is practical righteousness. ‘Show Me thy faith by thy works’ is Christ’s teaching quite as much as it is the teaching of His sturdy servant James. And so, dear friends, we are going the shortest way to enrich lives with all the beauties of possible human perfection when we say, ‘Begin at the beginning. The longest way round is the shortest way home; trust Him with all your hearts first, and that will effloresce into “whatsoever things are lovely and whatever things are of good report.”‘ In the beautiful metaphor of the Apostle Peter, in his second Epistle, Faith is the damsel who leads in the chorus of consequent graces; and we are exhorted to ‘add to our faith virtue,’ and all the others that unfold themselves in harmonious sequence from that one central source.

If I had time I should be glad to turn for a moment to the light which such considerations cast upon subjects that are largely occupying the attention of the Christian Church to-day. I should like to insist that, before you talk much about applied Christianity, you should be very sure that in men there is a Christianity to apply. I venture to profess my own humble belief that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, Christian ministers and churches will do no more for the social, political, and intellectual and moral advancement of men and the elevation of the people by sticking to their own work and preaching this Gospel-’This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.’

IV. Lastly, this faith secures the bread of life.

The bread of life is the starting-point of the whole conversation. In the widest possible sense it is whatsoever truly stills the hunger of the immortal soul. In a deeper sense it is the person of Jesus Christ Himself, for He not only says that He will give, but that He is the Bread of Life. And, in the deepest sense of all, it is His flesh broken for us in His sacrifice on the Cross. That bread is a gift. So the paradox results which stands in our text-work for the bread which God will give. If it be a gift, that fact determines what sort of work must be done in order to possess it. If it be a gift, then the only work is to accept it. If it be a gift, then we are out of the region of quid pro quo; and have not to bring, as Chinese do, great strings of copper cash that, all added up together, do not amount to a shilling, in order to buy what God will bestow upon us. If it be a gift, then to trust the Giver and to accept the gift is the only condition that is possible.

It is not a condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed. The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If a man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus Christ does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread of life into my unwilling mouth. If we ask, we get; if we take, we get.

And so the paradox comes, that we work for a gift, with a work which is not work because it is a departure from myself. It is the same blessed paradox which the prophet spoke when he said, ‘Buy . . . without money and without price.’ Oh! what a burden of hopeless effort and weary toil-like that of the man that had to roll the stone up the hill, which ever slipped back again-is lifted from our shoulders by such a word as this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now! ‘Thou art careful and troubled about many things,’ poor soul! trying to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil. Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, ‘Give up self-imposed effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for you.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 6:28. Τὶ ποιῶμεν) What are we to do; what work do you desire us to work? Joh 6:27, “Labour—for the meat which endureth to everlasting life.”—τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Θεοῦ, the works of God) The works approved by God, and which unite us to God.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_6:28-29. The people perceive that a moral requirement is signified by τὴν βρῶσιν τ. μένουσαν, etc.; they do not understand what, but they think that Jesus means works, which God requires to be done (ἔργα τ. θεοῦ, comp. Mat_6:33; Rev_2:26; Bar_2:9; Jer_48:10). Therefore the question, What are we to do, to work the works required by God? (which thou seemest to mean). Ἐργάζεσθαι ἔργα, to perform works, very common in all Greek (see on Joh_3:21): ἐργάζ. here, therefore, is not to be taken as in Joh_6:27.

Joh_6:29. See Luthardt in the Stud. u. Krit. 1852, p. 333 ff. Instead of the many ἔργα θεοῦ which they, agreeably to their legal standing-point, had in view, Jesus mentions only one ἔργον, in which, however, all that God requires of them is containedthe work (the moral act) of faith. Of this one divinely appointed and all-embracing workthe fundamental virtue required by Godthe manifold ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ are only different manifestations.

In the purpose expressed by τοῦτο … ἵνα there lies the idea: This is the work which God wills, ye must believe. Comp. Joh_5:47, Joh_15:8; Joh_15:12, Joh_17:3; 1Jn_4:17; 1Jn_5:3. See on Php_1:9. And this fundamental requirement repeatedly recurs in the following discourses, Joh_6:35-36; Joh_6:40; Joh_6:47, etc.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 28, 29. The brief dialogue which follows bears upon the true means of obtaining this really desirable good, the food which abides; it is the true mode of ἐργάζεσθαι (working).

Vv. 28, 29. “They said therefore to Him: What must we do, to do the works of God? 29. Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent.”

As Jesus had said: “Labor (literally, work),” the hearers, believing that they entered into His thought, ask Him: How work? In what do these works to be done for obtaining the food which Thou offerest consist? They call them the works of God, as being demanded by God as the condition of this gift. They start herein from the legal point of view, and see in these works to be done a work for which the miraculous food is the payment. It is impossible for me to see that there can be anything “grotesque” or improbable in this answer of the Jews (Reuss). It corresponds with many questions of the same kind in the Synoptics. (Mat 19:16; Luk 10:25, etc.) Jesus, in His turn, enters into this idea of works to be done; only He reduces them all to a single one: the work, in contrast to the works (Joh 6:28).

This work is faith in Him; in other terms: the gift of God is to be, not deserved, but simply accepted. Faith in Him whom God sends to communicate it is the sole condition for receiving it. It is evident that, in this context, the genitive τοῦ θεοῦ, of God, designates, not the author of the work (Augustine), but the one with reference to whom it is done: the question is of the work which God requires. What is called Paulinism is implied in this answer, which may be called the point of union between Paul and James. Faith is really a work, the highest work, for by it man gives himself, and a free being cannot do anything greater than to give himself. It is in this sense that James opposes work to a faith which is only a dead intellectual belief; as it is in an analogous sense, that St. Paul opposes faith to works of mere observance. The living faith of Paul is, at the foundation, the living work of James, according to that sovereign formula of Jesus: “This is the work of God, that ye believe.” With the discussion of the true human work which leads to the possession of the heavenly gift is connected a new one on the way to the attaining of faith. The Jews think that in order to this end, there is need for them of new miracles. Jesus declares to them that the true sign is present; it is Himself.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Which please God: for they think that everlasting life hangeth upon the condition of fulfilling the Law: therefore Christ calleth them back to faith.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

What shall we do . . . the works of God--such works as God will approve. Different answers may be given to such a question, according to the spirit which prompts the inquiry. (See Hos 6:6-8; Luk 3:12-14). Here our Lord, knowing whom He had to deal with, shapes His reply accordingly.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 28. That we might work the works of God?] That is, Divine works, or such as God can approve.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

28. What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? The multitude understood well enough that Christ had exhorted them to aim at something higher than the conveniences of the present life, and that they ought not to confine their attention to the earth, since God calls them to more valuable blessings. But, in putting this question, they are partly mistaken by not understanding the kind of labor; for they do not consider that God bestows upon us, by the hand of the Son, all that is necessary for spiritual life. First, they ask what they ought to do; and next, when they use the expression, the works of God, they do not understand what they say, and talk without any definite object. In this manner they manifest their ignorance of the grace of God. And yet they appear here to murmur disdainfully against Christ, as if he were accusing them groundlessly. “Dost thou suppose,” say they, “that we have no solicitude about eternal life? Why, then, dost thou enjoin us to do what is beyond our power?” By the works of God we must understand those which God demands, and of which he approves.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(28) This verse confirms the meaning given to the preceding words. They understand them in that sense. There are works for them to do which are appointed of God. What shall they do that they may work these works? They had seen Him doing mighty works, which clearly showed the power of God. Are there for them works of a like kind? What steps must they take that they too may work them?

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

28. Then said they] They said therefore.

What shall we do, that we might work] Better, what must we do that we may work. They see that His words have a moral meaning; they are to do works pleasing to God. But how to set about this?

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jesus answered and said unto them, this is the work of God,.... The main and principal one, and which is well pleasing in his sight; and without which it is impossible to please him; and without which no work whatever is a good work; and this is of the operation of God, which he himself works in men; it is not of themselves, it is the pure gift of God:

that ye believe on him whom he hath sent; there are other works which are well pleasing to God, when rightly performed, but faith is the chief work, and others are only acceptable when done in the faith of Christ. This, as a principle, is purely God's work; as it is an act, or as it is exercised under the influence of divine grace, it is man's act: "that ye believe"; the object of it is Christ, as sent by the Father, as the Mediator between God and men, as appointed by him to be the Saviour and Redeemer; and believing in Christ, is believing in God that sent him. The Jews reduce all the six hundred and thirteen precepts of the law, for so many they say there are, to this one, "the just shall live by his faith", Hab 2:4. (e).

(e) T. Bab. Maccot, fol. 23. 2. & 24. 1.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

Ver. 28. That we might work] We would still be working, weaving a web of righteousness of our own, spinning a thread of our own to climb up to heaven by, that we might say with the spider, Nulli debeo; and with that Popish merit monger, Coelum gratis non accipiam, I will not have heaven of free cost. Men would have heaven as a purchase. I would swim through a sea of brimstone, said one, that I might come to heaven at last. But those that cry haec ego feci, I do this, Luther wittily calls the devil’s faeces; dregs, as those that seek to be saved by their good works, he fitly calls the devil’s martyrs; because they suffer much and take much pains to go to hell. Let us all take heed of this piece of natural Popery; and learn to be in duty in respect of performance, and yet out of duty in respect of dependance. We are all apt to do otherwise; and like broken chapmen (merchant) we would still be chaffering, if but for small matters; and think to be saved for a company of poor beggarly businesses.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? - That is, such things as God will approve. This was the earnest inquiry of men who were seeking to be saved. They had crossed the Sea of Tiberias to seek him; they supposed him to be the Messiah, and they sincerely desired to be taught the way of life; yet it is observable that they expected to find that way as other sinners commonly do - by their works. The idea of doing something to merit salvation is one of the last that the sinner ever surrenders.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

They easily understood that our Saviour did not speak of any worldly food, by his opposing the labour he mentions, and persuadeth for, to a labour for the world; but still they did not understand what labour he spake of, but dreamed of the works of the law; knowing of no other work which God commanded, but which was prescribed in the law; and they (probably) being some, or many of them, strict observers, especially of the law contained in ordinances, and probably many of them of the moral law also, according to the sense of it given by their teachers; in which sense the young man, Mat 19:20, being bid by our Saviour to keep the law, and naming most of the precepts of the second table, told him, All these things have I kept from my youth: what lack I yet? They wondered what works our Saviour meant; what labour, when he said, Labour for that bread, or that meat which endureth to everlasting life; thinking that those who kept the law (in the sense before expressed) had no more to do.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

28. Work the works of God—The Greek word labour in Joh_6:27 is the same as this word work and works, and should have been rendered uniformly. Christ tells them, Joh_6:27, to work a divine work for eternal life; they here, in reply, ask how they shall work this godly work. In this inquiry they seem for one hopeful instant disposed to direct their view to the higher object. Jesus grasps at it in the next verse, and makes one effort to bring them to himself. This is the crisis of their destiny.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

They say unto him, What must we do, that we may work the works of God? The works of God might be, either works like those which are wrought by God the Father, but this would be a very improbable demand; or "the works of God" may be those which God has assigned to man as the conditions of his favour. There is a breadth about the question that may cover the ground involved in Christ"s declaration, but it reveals, at the same time, the self-complacency, the carnal conception on the part of these Galilaeans of their being able, competent, to fulfil along certain lines to be specified, all the required conditions. But we must not be too hard on these Galilaeans, brought up as they were to believe in the efficacy of certain rounds of specific and arbitrary duties, methods of purification, forms of service and of abstinence, pilgrimages and fastings and feastings, as well as obedience to a specific moral code. They ask quite rationally, "What must we do?" and in various forms the same question bursts from the heart of all who have, starting from utter indifference, made any progress towards, or in the direction of, holy living or of Divine pleasing.

Vers. 28, 29. The work of God.

It is not easy to decide what was the spirit in which the Jews took up the admonition of Jesus, "Work not for the meat that perisheth," etc., and upon its suggestion urged the question which called forth our Lord"s reply. Probably they had a very imperfect apprehension of the meaning of the words they used, when they asked, "What must we do that we may work the works of God?" yet, as there is no evidence that at this stage they had ill feeling towards Jesus, it is better to assume that their question was not captious but sincere.

I AN ADMIRABLE INQUIRY.

1. It reveals a noble conception of the higher life of man, which may be justly said to consist in working the work of God.

2. It embodies a worthy aspiration and purpose; for it implies that those who spoke thus believed themselves to be prepared to do whatever needed to be done, in order that by them the work of God might in some measure be accomplished.

3. It is a question which is becoming to all thoughtful students of human life, and to all who desire a law to direct their individual energy. It is too unusual; for whilst there are many, especially amongst the young, who ask What shall we do to be rich, honoured, powerful, happy? there are few who eagerly inquire how they may work God"s work. They who do so in sincerity, with docility, and with the resolution to obey the directions given, are certain to be led aright. For this question, when urged by ardent natures, excites joy, not only in the minds of Christ"s ministers, but in the very heart of Christ himself.

II A MEMORABLE AND DECISIVE REPLY.

1. It is a seeming paradox. Why, when the question was, "What shall we do?" should the answer be, "Believe"? An unexpected response! They who look at the matter superficially are wont to say Never mind what you believe, so that you do what is right. But Christ puts faith first.

2. Belief in Christ is obedience, because God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, as the Object of human faith. It is the will of God that men should believe on his Son. It is the supreme moral probation of every man, when Jesus comes to him and demands his faith. Christ points away from many works to one work.

3. As a matter of fact, belief in Christ is the turning of the soul to righteousness. For this is the means of securing pardon and acceptance, of becoming right with God, and also of securing spiritual strength and guidance for the duties of the earthly life.

4. It is a great moral principle, which the gospel takes up and uses for highest ends, that faith underlies doing. A man"s inner convictions determine what his habitual works, his moral life, shall be. Such is the relation between faith and works, as taught by both Paul and James; the one apostle laying stress upon faith, the other upon works, and both pleading the authority of this and other sayings of the great Teacher himself. Believing is the beginning, work is the continuation, of the life; belief is the inner, work is the outer, process; belief is the motive, work the result; belief is the cause, work the effect. The Divine life for man is a work; but it is a work based upon a Divine Person, and it is faith which so bases it, which unites the worker to the living and personal Power. T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The works of God - Works pleasing to God.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Here the Jews, who were strict observers of the ceremonial law of Moses, and rested thereupon for salvation, inquire of our Saviour what they should do that they might please God? Christ directs them to the great duty of believing on himself to own and acknowledge him to be the true Messiah, and as such to rely upon him alone for salvation; This is the work of God, that ye believe, &c.

Learn hence, That for a penitent humble sinner to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, is a work highly pleasing and acceptable unto God. Christ calls faith the work of God, upon a threefold account; it is the work of his efficiency and operation; it is the work of his commanding; and it is the work of his approbation and acceptation, a work that God is highly pleased with, and greatly delighted in; This is the work of God.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

28. What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? These seekers of Christ are eager for more information. He had bidden them work for the food of eternal life. What works then shall they do that they may please God and receive the divine gift?

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

translationWords

works

believe

send

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

28. τί ποιῶμεν …; What must we do (Joh 6:5) that we may work? Perhaps they understood Him to mean that they must earn what they desire; certainly they see that Christ’s words have a moral meaning; they must do the works required by God. But how?

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

28.] The people understand His ἐργάζεσθε literally, and dwell upon it. They quite seem to think that the food which is to endure for ever is to be spiritually interpreted; and they therefore ask this question,—referring the ἐργάζ. to the works of the law.

τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ must not be taken to mean ‘the works which God works,’ but, as in Jer 48:10 (31:10 LXX): 1Co 15:58, the works well pleasing to God.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

28. εἶπον οὖν πρὸς αὐτόν. For the constr. here and at v. 34, see on 2:3.

ποιῶμεν (אABLNTΓΔ) is the true reading, not ποιοῦμεν of the rec. text. ΘW fam. 13 have ποιήσωμεν.

τί ποιῶμεν ; “What shall we do?” The question is not mere carping. They understand that they must please God, if they are to have the food which endures unto eternal life; and they ask quite naturally, “What then are we to do? What does God require of us?” (cf. Luk 3:10).

ἵνα έργαζώμεθα τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ, i.e. the works which God desires of men (cf. 1Co 15:58). Cf. τὰ ἔργα Κυρίου (Jer 31:10, LXX). The phrase in Num 8:11 ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα Κυρίου is no true parallel; and the ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ of Joh 9:3 denote the works which God Himself does.

To their question, Jesus replies that works are the issue of the life of faith, that faith in Him is the condition of doing τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

What shall we do? [τι ποιουμεν] . Literally, what do we do? The best texts read poiwmen, what are we to do?

Works. The question is from the legal standpoint, works being regarded as the condition of obtaining the living bread.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.