Commentaries:
God works to create in His children faith in Jesus Christ because He has decreed salvation is by grace through faith. Faith is absolutely essential, and so He works to create in us a strong trust His Son. This is done through "feeding the flock." Only a small portion of it is done in the initial conversion. We have to live by faith, not merely profess Jesus Christ. It is necessary that faith be built in us because our choices should be made on the basis of faith.
John W. Ritenbaugh
What Is the Work of God Now? (Part 1)
There are at least two possible ways to understand what He means. The first is that God is always working to produce faith in His people so they can properly use their free moral agency. The second, however, is the primary meaning because they ask what they had to do. Jesus replies that godly work for the individual is believing in or on Him as Messiah.
In other words, as Jesus uses it, faith is itself a work. Labor is involved in faith because living faith requires activity to meet the definition given in James 2. As the apostle says, faith without works is dead, and such "faith" is in realty not even faith. Some, especially evangelical Protestants, object to this because they feel it creates a "works" salvation.
Their objections, though, are so much sound and fury without biblical substance. Jesus says at least a dozen times in different ways that salvation is by grace. Biblically, merely believing or agreeing with God or some biblical doctrine is of itself no better than being dead. Dead things produce nothing because nothing is working to produce anything. This is why Paul in Hebrews 3 can use "unbelief" and "disobedience" interchangeably. In other words, if a person only agrees, he merely has a preference, and his works will be at best inconsistent and sporadic. If a person has living faith, however, his belief will be a conviction, and works will occur.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Eating: How Good It Is! (Part Four)
The purpose of the manifestation of the works of God in Christ—the miracles, the feeding of 5,000, of 4,000, the healing of people, restoring sight, giving people hearing—were all done by God to produce faith so that we would believe. If God did these things for all of those people, would He not do the same for us? God is shaping and molding events in our lives so that our faith is continually strengthened. God wants us to trust Him and His Word and to respond in faith.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith (Part 3)
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Other commentary entries containing this verse:
Jeremiah 25:3-4
Habakkuk 3:2
John 5:17-19
John 6:44
Ephesians 2:8-10
Ephesians 2:8
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