Christ's Doctrine of Faith: A Study of "Believing" in John's Gospel (John 6:29)

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The twenty-ninth time the idea of “believing” occurs in John’s Gospel is John 6:29, which says: “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (KJV). So, as we have covered previous texts where “believe” or any of its cognates occur, we’ll consider 1) the context of John 6:29 and 2) what we can learn about faith from John 6:29.

So, what is the context of John 6:29? Jesus’s conversation with Jews who oppose Him, in John 5:18-47, has come to an end. After this clash, He goes over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. A great multitude follows Him, because they saw the miracles He performed on diseased people. He goes up into a mountain and sits there with His disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover is near. Jesus sets His focus on the great multitude coming to Him, during which He asks Philip from where they should buy bread so that the crowd may eat. He asks this of Philip to prove him, because He knows what He will do. Philip answers by saying that two hundred pennyworth of bread is not enough for the multitude, so that every one in the crowd may take a little. Another one of Jesus’s disciples, Andrew, who is Simon Peter’s brother, tells Him that there is a boy who has five barley loaves and two small fishes before wondering out loud what such a meager amount of food is among so many people. The Lord then commands to make the men in the crowd sit down, and the men, who are about five thousand, comply by sitting in the area, which has much grass. Jesus takes the loaves, gives thanks, and distributes the loaves and fishes to the disciples, who, in turn, distribute them to the seated crowd, and they distribute as much as they want. The crowd ends up being filled through Christ’s provision, during which filling He tells His disciples to gather up the fragments that remain so that nothing will be lost. So, the disciples gather together, filling twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above to those who had eaten. Then the men of the multitude, upon seeing this miracle of Christ’s, recognize Him as the Prophet that should come into the world. Jesus perceives that they will come and take Him to forcibly make Him a king, He departs into a mountain alone. When evening comes, His disciples go down into the sea, enter a ship, and travel over the sea toward Capernaum. At this point, it is dark and the Lord has not yet come to them. And the sea rises because of a great wind. Then, when the disciples row about twenty-five or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the ship, and the disciples become afraid. But the Lord assures them by telling them that it is He and commanding them to not be afraid. His disciples then willingly receive Him into the ship, which immediately finds itself at the land where they were traveling to. The next day, the people who were on the other side of the sea notice that no other boat is there, except the one that the disciples entered into, also realizing that Jesus did not travel in the boat with them and that the disciples had gone away alone. However, there is a parenthetical comment that other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread, after which Christ had given thanks. When these people therefore see that neither Christ or His disciples are there, they take a ship and head toward Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they find Him on the other side of the sea, they address Him as “Rabbi” and ask Him when He came there. He responds by assuring them that they are seeking Him, not because they saw the signs, but because they ate of the loaves and became filled. He then exhorts them not to work for the food that perishes, but instead for the food that endures to eternal life, which He, the Son of Man, will give to them, because He is the One whom God the Father has sealed. They then ask Him what they should do, so that they may work the works of God. Jesus’s answer is that the work of God is this: to believe on the One whom God has sent. This is the context of John 6:29!

Now, what can we learn about faith from John 6:29? One thing we can see is that faith is like eating, where Christ is the food and believing is eating Him. Obviously, as we will see as we go through John 6, the language of “eating” Christ is metaphorical. As I have learned from multiple Bible teachers, and which I think we will also see as we continue through this chapter, one “eats” Christ by trusting in Him, and this trust makes Him (spiritually speaking) part of the believer, like how food, physically, becomes part of the one who eats it. A second thing we can see about faith is that it is the one “work” a man must do to become right with God. Not that faith is actually a work, because Romans ch. 4 is absolutely clear that faith and works are total opposites, with the former being the way to be saved by Christ. Rather, as I remember hearing from at least one commentator, Jesus is accommodating the language of those He is talking to at this moment. Essentially, what the idea here appears to be is this: when one asks the question “What must I do to be saved?”, the answer is simply to “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). In other words, trust Him to be all that the Holy Spirit reveals Him to be in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:21)! These are some things we can learn about faith from John 6:29!