What Does John 6:28 Mean?
Then they said to him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?THE KEY
The same Greek work-word moves from “work” to “works,” and Jesus’ answer turns the search for many deeds into one work: trust in the one sent.
THE MEANING
The question names a familiar pressure: that you must find the right action to qualify for God’s work. Jesus answers by calling trust in the one God sends the work of God. The movement is from trying to produce divine work to receiving the one through whom it is present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that access to God’s work comes by accumulating the correct deeds; Jesus replaces the plural output with one trusting response.
THE ROOT
ἐργαζώμεθα
ergazōmetha
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
Work, labor, or deed: activity and what that activity produces.
“work / works” in this verse is ergazōmetha. The Greek repeats one word-family: ἐργαζώμεθα (ergazōmetha, “we might work”) with ἔργα (erga, “works”). That repetition makes their question sound like a search for how to produce God’s activity; in the next verse Jesus keeps ἔργον (ergon, “work”) singular and names trust in the sent one as that work.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: Work, deed, or result.
ἔργον
Jesus uses the singular form in the answer, turning the question about many works toward one work.
ergazomai: To work, labor, or accomplish.
ἐργάζομαι
This verb shares the root with “works,” binding the action they seek to the deeds they imagine producing.
THE PATTERN
God’s work is the source of human action, and trust is how that work is received.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for the sake of his good pleasure.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.THE THREAD
Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you lean your full weight into the one he has sent.The same root noun returns as ἔργον (ergon, “work”), now singular, and Jesus identifies it with believing in the one sent. The many “works” sought as output become one relational act of trust.
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