Jesus says in John 6:29 that the work of God was to believe in the one he sent. What does this mean since there are many works of God and works we do for God.
Maybe I can explain my question like this, what is believing in God? It's obviously more than a mental acknowledgement of the facts (the Jews took Christ's words to mean that and christ never really elaborated but said they don't and will never believe because they aren't among his flock).
But, we do many works for God. We try to sin less and have the Holy Spirit help us with our sins. We love our Christian brothers and sisters, and we give Charity regularly. If just a mental acknowledgement of the facts were required of us, why listen to the Bible and the rest of Christ's teachings? What's our motivation? I hope I'm making sense, if not then I'm sorry.
Sometimes a saying in the bible may be a bit more terse, for the purpose at hand, than it needs to be for a full explanation. But the very first work of God in us
is faith. From there everything else flows, or at least the door is now open to that flowing. Faith, as with hope and love, is both a gift and a human choice, so it's a work of
both of us, God and man. We can accept and act upon or express those gifts, and do so with more or less conviction and intensity, or we can reject the gift at any point.
Faith is first of all to acknolwedge God's
existence, simple as that sounds, which, by itself, already pleases Him immensely This is to reverse the choice of Adam within ourselves, his disobedeince being an act of disbelief, of infidelity, because, by denying God's authority Adam effectively denied His
godhood, becoming his
own "god". But as we now believe in His existence we're also coming to recognize and believe in His goodness, trustworthines, mercy: in His love, which makes Him Someone truly worth believing
in. This is all due to the revelation of Christ, who shows us the true face of the Father by everything He said and did. With grace we may now turn back to the God whom Adam basically shunned, to the detriment of us all. Man was absolutely made for communion with God and is lost if apart from Him. The basis of our faith is knowledge, the "knowledge of God", the more direct or personal knowledge that was lost at the Fall:
"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." John 17:3
With that knowledge and the faith it engenders we enter fellowship with God, and He begins a work in us:
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” Jer 31:33
That's the "righteousness of God" spoken of in Phil 3:9 and elsewhere-rather than of man who
has no true righteousness on his own. And that righteousness is real, defined by faith, hope, and love, with love being the most important. And love works, or acts, for the good of others, by its nature, doing good, Rom 2:7, fulfilling or obeying the commandments, Rom 2:13, Rom 13:10, and Matt 19:17, being sanctified, Rom 6:22 and 8:12-13, doing the works prepared for us in advance, Eph 2:10, doing "for the least of these", Matt 25, etc.
Anyway, faith can and is meant to lead to all this by virtue of the union with God that it establishes-but as the will of man continues to be involved throughout this work, this process, this journey, we can still mess it up, we can compromise that union, that relationship, by not remaining in Him, by returning to the flesh, IOW, by not doing His will, not picking up our cross and following daily, not "investing our talents", not participating with the Spirit, in His work.
So, for example, we're saved by faith, and yet we won't be forgiven unless we also forgive others, unless we love with the love God has shown
us, IOW.
