Jesus expresses a relationship with God the Father that is fundamentally unlike anything a human being can experience.
Let’s just look at several of these statements from John, Chapter 5:
- Verse 19: The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
- Verse 20: The Father loves the Son and shows him all he is doing.
- Verse 21: As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so does the Son.
- Verse 23: If you do not honor the Son, you do not honor the Father.
Jesus is claiming absolute equality with God. This is remarkable. I cannot imagine being in that audience, hearing him say these things.
There is core Christian doctrine here: We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the ONLY SON OF GOD, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father (Nicene Creed).
What in the world does that mean? Simply this: Jesus is the Son of God, and he is equal with the Father in honor, dignity, and power.
The Father and the Son have one will. The Father does nothing without the Son and the Son does nothing without the Spirit.
This gets misconstrued a lot. You see a lot of heated rhetoric from people who have no knowledge of classical Christian theology: “God is a murderer and monster; he killed his own Son against his will.” There is one will in the Godhead. Our God is three in one. One of the Church’s greatest theologians (Gregory of Nazianzus) in the 4th Century was just as stupefied by this mystery as we are. He is helpful here:
No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of That One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.
We worship one God in Trinity and one Trinity in unity.
I’m confused; what do I take from this? One nature; three persons.
So what? Why does this matter to me? Hear Jesus plainly and clearly: If you want to honor the Father, listen to my voice. If you want eternal life, listen to my voice.
For the confused and weary, here stands Jesus: If you want to know God, look at me. If you want to see how God loves, watch me. If you want to know what is true, listen to me. If you want to understand the Scriptures, study me.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. By him, through him, and for him, are all things created.