The New Testament of the Bible launched into the Western world an entirely new concept of ‘work’: it was no longer the arduous thing that the Hellenic philosophers had wanted to avoid, nor was it merely the Hebraic God’s creative act or the Jewish observance of the law; it was now God’s saving act. God’s work made man’s work of only secondary significance. Everyone is familiar with the Pauline and Lutheran doctrine of a distinction between ‘justification by faith’ and ‘justification by works’. But no such distinction is possible when we consider the full range of meanings of work in the New Testament. There are many words for ‘work’ in the New Testament: not only ergon, work in the sense of effective act, but also kopos, work in the sense of burdensome act, and ponos, work in the sense of painful act; and not only these still relatively straightforward terms, but also the related and importantly contrasted words praxis and poiesis (the origins of our words for ‘practice’ and ‘poetry’) and words for specific and significant works: healings, miracles, signs, even resurrection. Work is no simple category in the Bible and cannot be: because there is a continual leaping over of the levels from earthly to heavenly. Therefore, the New Testament contains much matter about ordinary work, in the sense of toil, but also discusses the messianic and apostolic work of healing and preaching, and, finally, it recognises the work of God the Father in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. By ‘faith’ the Christian tradition did not disparage work: on the contrary, it asked Christians to trust in work, the work of God.