ergon

At its root this is the ordinary Greek word for what you do: your job, your deed, your product, your task. It comes from the same ancient root as the English word "work" and covers the same wide ground. From one simple idea the New Testament draws three closely linked shades: the concrete deed a person performs, the task or labor a person is given to carry out, and the finished product the labor leaves behind. These are not separate words but one word turned to face different parts of the same picture, and context, not a change of meaning, decides which is in view.

Much of the New Testament's weight on this word falls on the idea that a person's works are evidence. They show what someone truly is, whether good or evil, done in the light or done in the dark, and they lie open to inspection when God judges. This is why the word carries such freight in Paul, James, John, and Revelation, and why it sits at the center of the long argument over faith and works, where the question is never whether deeds matter but what they can and cannot accomplish.

The same word means noticeably different things from writer to writer, and reading one meaning into another is the most common mistake:

• In Paul the "works of the law" are the demands of the law of Moses, leaned on as a ground for being right with God, which he insists cannot justify anyone.
• In James, works are the concrete acts of mercy that prove a faith is alive rather than an empty claim.
• In John, Jesus' works are the mission the Father gave him to finish, deeds that testify to who he is (deeds John can also call signs, σημεῖον).
• In the letter to the Ephesians and the letters to Timothy and Titus, good works are the goal grace produces, not the price it demands, since believers are God's own handiwork (ποίημα) made to do them.
• In Revelation a church's works are its lived record of faithfulness under pressure, laid open at the last judgment.