"What Must We Do?"

Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, the you might believe in him whom he has sent."

If you don't get who God sent, it was Jesus. Let's just make that clear right from the start. This passage from John 6:28-29 could be one of the most important things Jesus says in his recorded words. His response to the crowd separates him from all other religious ideas then and now.

Isn't this question they ask still pertinent to us today? Even as a follower of Jesus who sits under his authority and word, I ask this question: What must I do? A common prayer is asking God what we should do with our lives, where should we go, what we must accomplish. Our individualistic Western minds surely do not help, and spend a night on any college campus and students are seriously searching for what they should do and are never content with what they are doing.

But Christ doesn't answer the question the way maybe I would have. You see, we are to do something. We are to believe. Why? Because the work of God (the only work that really matters in the end) has been accomplished through Jesus Christ. He is the work of God, he has accomplished what had to be accomplished. He has conquered the darkness, and now, calling us to be lights to the world, we are to push that darkness back by calling on his name: Jesus Christ, the work of God.