John 5:19

John 5:19. Jesus therefore answered and said unto them. We have already found Jesus replying to those who did not receive His utterance of a truth by a repeated and more emphatic declaration of the very truth which they rejected (see John 3:5). So it is here. He had been accused of blasphemy in calling God ‘His own Father' and making Himself equal with God. He solemnly reiterates His claim, and expresses with greater force the unity of His working with the working of God His Father.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can of himself do nothing save what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these things the Son also in like manner doeth. The connection of this verse with the preceding is of itself sufficient to preclude the interpretation which some have given, that it has reference to the perfect obedience of the Son of man rather than to the essential oneness of the Son of God with the Father. The last words of the verse express the general positive truth that all the Father's works are done by the Son, and done by Him in like manner, while the mystery contained in them is not greater than that which is inherent in every statement relating to the Trinity. Anticipating for a moment what will meet us in later parts of the discourse, and remembering that human words can only be approximations to the truth, we may say that it is the Son's part to make the Father's works take the shape of actual realities among men. The Father's working and the Son's working are thus not two different workings, and they are not a working of the same thing twice. They are related to each other as the ideal to the phenomenal, as the thought to the word. The Father does not work actually; He works always through the Son. The Son does not work ideally; He works always from the Father. But God is always working; therefore the Son is always working; and the works of the Father are the works of the Son, distinct, yet one and the same. From this positive truth follows the denial which comes earlier in the verse. The Jews had denounced Jesus as a blasphemer, had thought that He was placing Himself in awful opposition to God. This is impossible, for the Son can do nothing of Himself; severance from the Father in action is impossible, how much more contrariety of action! The Son can do nothing of Himself, can indeed do nothing save what He seeth the Father doing. (The remarks on ‘save' made above, see chap. John 3:13, are exactly applicable here. See also chap. John 15:4, which closely resembles this verse in mode of expression.) The subordination of the Son, which subsists together with perfect unity, is expressed in the former half of the verse by the ‘seeing,' in the latter by the order of the clauses. The whole verse is a translation of the truth expressed in the Prologue (John 5:1; John 5:18).