John 6:28-29:
They said to him, “What must we do to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
Gospel-centered ministry is—simply, and obviously—ministry that is centered around the message of the Gospel (the good news of Jesus Christ). The most frequent complaint that I hear about Gospel-centered ministry has to do with its perceived deficiency. Many people don’t just want to hear about the fact that they have been saved by the Cross; they want to hear about the specific works that they must do after they are saved. Sadly, on the other hand many believers likewise don’t want to merely talk about the fact that they have been saved by the Cross; they would rather skip the meat and talk about practical steps people must do after they are saved.
A common response to Gospel-centered ministry might sound like this:
“I know that Jesus died to save me, and there is nothing that I value more than that, but there are other things I need to know too. How do I deal with my depression? What do I do about starving people in the world? How does a godly person respond to difficult relationships? The Gospel was obviously important—and essential—for my salvation, but I want to know: What do I do now?”
I think I understand why we ask this question. We do it because we feel that, somehow, something is still incomplete. I understand why a person would think that a ministry that preaches only Christ and him crucified is missing out on application. Moreover, this is typically the cry of a heart that genuinely wants to serve God, and wants to know how to serve God. Luckily for us, Jesus had to respond to the same question–before he was even crucified.
Just before this interaction with a crowd of people (as recorded in John 6), Jesus was telling his listeners not to labor for food, but to labor for that which endures to eternal life. In short, he was telling them to labor for him. He wanted their lives to be a reflection of the fact that they found ultimate satisfaction, pleasure, and joy in him, and not anything like bread, which simply comes from him. The point was himself—the Son of God—the one who came to save us.
Understandably, the people still don’t know what this looks like so they ask, “What works must we do in order to be doing the works of God?” They want to know what action they must take, or what rituals they must perform, in order to be working for the things that go into eternal life. Interestingly enough, Jesus answers things by playing a game with their grammar. They say “what works?” He says, “the work.” Did you catch that? He changes the game.
They want to know what things they must be doing in order to be doing the work of God. Jesus, on the other hand, tells them there is only one thing that they must do. What is this one work? In the answer to this question, we find the most interesting thing: the one work is belief in him—the one whom God has sent. The one work of God is to believe the Gospel.
If we see this, then we will be made aware of the importance and relevance of Gospel-centered ministry. When Jesus says “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” he is explaining that every work of God that we ever do is the practical manifestation of our belief in the Gospel—our belief in what Jesus already accomplished on the Cross and through his resurrection. According to Jesus, belief is what’s most important, for out of this belief will come the work of God, by the power of God.
Look to 1 Corinthians 13. We can do the following things without gaining anything: speak in tongues, prophesy, have miraculous knowledge, have all faith, move mountains, give up all our possessions, deliver our bodies to be burned. How is this possible? Aren’t all of those things the work of God? Well, yes… but only provided that they are done as a fruit of our belief in the Gospel.
Why didn’t Jesus just tell the crowd of people the things that God approves of? Because Jesus is not, has never been, and will never be, a legalist. If we preach do’s and do not’s, we are no better than the legalistic Pharisees who did exactly that. Our good works are only good if they are an overflow of our belief in Jesus.
So then, what do we do? We spend the rest of our lives preaching to the world the ways that a person can believe the Gospel. And, we preach the exact same message to ourselves daily. Our job as believing Christians is to weed out sin, and spur one another on into righteousness—the righteousness of Christ, not our own—which is shown by the carrying out of the work of God. Jesus tells it best, and he tells it true. Let’s listen to his words and recognize the significance of believing that Jesus Christ is our all-satisfying, all-desirable, and all-worthy Lord in everything we do. That is where it all begins.
Believe it today.
“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (The Apostle Paul, 1 Cor 2:2)
