After showing the importance of belief, Jesus urges Nicodemus to action.
But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (John 3:21).
The person doing the truth enters the light. Nicodemus must both believe and do. Jesus, of course, knows how Pharisees ‘work’ for their self-righteousness. So He describes the action He requires as “carried out in God” (or more literally, worked in God).
This work depends on God, not man. It credits God, not man. It submits to God’s will, not man’s tradition (see Mark 7).
Jews later ask, ““What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus does not satisfy their desire to earn merit. He replies,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29).
Any work Jesus may demand is simply belief in action. When the Lord commands, true belief obeys. Disobeying proves one’s confession of faith to be false.
Why do you call me “Lord, Lord,” and not do what I tell you? (Luke 6:46).
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:21).
Jesus describes people who seem confident, and who confess Jesus as Lord. Yet He rejects their faith. Why? They are workers of lawlessness (Matthew 7:23). Their sin is leaving out God’s commands. They go to the same place as demons, for their faith is demonic. “Even the demons believe… and shudder” (James 2:19). Demons confess, yet remain rebels until their miserable end (Matthew 8:29; Jude 6). James warns us against their kind of ‘faith alone.’ Saving faith, he says, actively obeys.
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.… For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead (James 2:24,26).
Paul agrees with this. He fights human “works” such as circumcision. Yet he knows work “done through God” is essential.
New creation comes through faith; and according to inspired writers this kind of faith “works… obeying the truth” (Galatians 5:6-7). That sounds exactly like Jesus. While discussing new birth, He requires faith “doing the truth.” Dear friend, do you believe enough to obey? Only obedient faith can receive the gift of new life. God Himself makes your new purity – your new birth – a matter of “obeying the truth” of His word:
Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God (1 Peter 1:22-23).