Experiencing the Loving Relationship Within God

Last week we left things off on a bit of a cliffhanger. In verse 17, Jesus referred to God as his Father, saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” The Jewish leaders had been upset that Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath when they weren’t supposed to do any work on that day as they reflected on the way that God was working for them. And according to their own teaching, the only exemption to their understanding of that law was God himself.

Even on the Sabbath when God’s people would rest, they taught that God was always working to sustain his creation and keep the universe functioning. When Jesus points out that he is working as his Father is working, he was also placing himself above the Sabbath and saying his work was God’s work.

That’s why in verse 18 their response is that they “were seeking all the more to kill him.” Why? Because they knew in that statement that Jesus was “making himself equal with God.”

If I tell you that Macie and I have been struggling with our one-year-old daughter’s sleep—that’s it’s been really rough on us at night—you might see Macie give me a look—a look that’s saying, “I’ve been struggling with Nora’s sleep.” Sure, I might be in bed with them, but when Nora joins us in the middle of the night, it’s Macie that she wants to lay on top of as she’s fusses off and on while I’m over to the side knocked out.

When I lump us together in the statement without any kind of qualification, I’m saying we’re both dealing with the same thing.

And when Jesus says that, even on the Sabbath, God his Father is working and so is he—he’s telling us they’re doing the same work. Jesus is equal with God. And that’s the big point we left off on last week.

But what does Jesus’ equality with the Father look like, and why does that matter for us? In these next set of verses, Jesus is elaborating on exactly that. Just like you could learn a lot about me by looking at my relationship with my dad, we can learn a lot about Jesus by looking at how he relates to the Father.

But the point of Jesus’ words here is more than just teaching us about him—he’s also sharing more of what he invites us into. Christians like to talk about having a “relationship with God.” But the one God we see in the Bible is described as three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is God. The Son is God. And the Holy Spirit is God. At the same time: the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirt, and the Spirit is not the Father. That’s what the church has historically referred to as the Trinity: “One God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons, nor dividing their essence.”

Simple right? But just because a doctrine might be hard to grasp doesn’t mean it’s not practical for us. And we see the three persons of God working together for our good throughout both the Old and New Testament. In the creation account in the book of Genesis, God the Father created through his Word (which is how John 1:1 refers to Jesus), all while the Spirit hovered over the waters. In the New Testament, it’s the source of our salvation.

Without a triune God, the Father doesn’t send the Son, the Holy Spirit doesn’t empower the Son, the Son doesn’t atone for man’s sins to the Father, the Father’s wrath against sin isn’t appeased in the Son, the Son doesn’t send the Holy Spirit to indwell the church, and the Son doesn’t intercede to the Father for the church.

The doctrine of the Trinity should be an encouragement to us that all of God is working in all our life to bring all our being into forgiveness and right relationship with him. And it’s that last part that I think we often miss. Not just that our triune God created us and is able to redeem us, but that he invites us into relationship—and not just a new relationship with him but into the pre-existing relationship within him.

God didn’t create humanity because he was lonely. He already existed in perfect, loving community within himself. That’s the beauty of God being triune. And so it was out of the overflow of the eternal love within our creative God that he created us to love him and experience his love.

Why does all this matter? It means that if Jesus redeems us into a relationship with God, then understanding how the Father and Son relate to one another in passages like John 5:19-24 gives us a window into what we get to experience when he brings us into that loving relationship.

So, what I want to do this morning is look at four aspects of Jesus’ relationship to the Father and see how each of these make the gospel good news as they shape the way we follow him. So, statement number 1: Because Jesus submits to the Father when he is equal to him, we can trust him with our submission. Let’s look together at verse 19.

John 5:19 ESV

¹⁹ So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

Verse 19 starts off with the word “So”, telling us he’s elaborating on the idea of Jesus making himself equal with God back in verse 18. But while you would think someone saying they’re equal with God would be a statement of elevation, we see Jesus instead take a stance of humiliation. He says that he can’t “do anything of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.”

And it’s important if the Father and Son are equal to one another that they’re doing the same work. If Jesus was doing work like the Father and was equal to the Father, but he was working independently from the Father, then he would be his own God competing with the Father.

Just like a CVS and a Walgreens on opposite corners of the street. Same product, same business model, but different owners with different decisions makes them competitors.

That’s the concern from the Jews here who believe there’s only one God. But that’s not the statement Jesus is making. The key is in the phrase, “of his own accord.” Those two Greek words translated there literally mean “from himself”. Jesus is saying he cannot do anything of his own initiative. He doesn’t act separate from his Father.

We saw that at the end of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 when Jesus said his bread that sustained him was to do the will of the Father. Everything the Son does is in line with and submission to the Father.

He even gives us the perfect illustration at the end of the verse when he says that whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. As a father of a three year old boy, I can attest to that. For better or for worse, Ollie’s already started picking up many of the things I say and do.

But how can Jesus be equal with God the Father if he always submits to him in everything? Our culture would certainly say he can’t. Many of us would push back against Jesus’ words here and tell him the only way to be equal is to have the same level of authority. That the only good life is an autonomous life—a free life that makes it’s own decisions and isn’t constrained by others. Even in the western church, the idea of our “free will” is elevated so often as a doctrine while we speak very little on the biblical topic of submission.

But here, Jesus is quietly teaching us something very profound. John chapter 1 has already made the claim that Jesus isn’t just with God and like God; he is God. Here again in verse 18, it’s reiterated that he believes he’s equal with God. And yet, even though he’s fully divine, fully eternal, and fully worthy, Jesus’ willing submission to the Father tells us that a difference in authority does not mean a difference in ability; a difference in authority does not mean a difference in value.

This is the foundation for how we understand the distinction of roles in the church and for the distinction of roles in the home: we can be different in what we do, we can submit to someone else, and we can still be equally and gloriously valuable in the eyes of our God.

But the idea of submission is usually looked down upon for two reasons. First, what we just covered: there’s the assumption that our role equates to our value, which Jesus undoes here. But second, when you submit to someone, you can be hurt by them. You can be used by them.

We’re regularly reminded in the news of stories of people in positions of power who used their authority to coerce and abuse those around them. Why would we ever willingly submit to someone and put ourselves in that position?

But this where Jesus is good news. He’s the authority figure that let go of his authority. He’s the boss that stooped down to join his people. He has all the ability and yet willingly, and even joyfully, submits to another.

If your problem with submission is that you’re concerned it’ll make you worth less or make you feel hurt, the relationship of Jesus to God the Father tells us we have someone whose own submission makes him whole and happy. It’s part of his relationship that unites him to the Father. And that’s what we’re invited into when we follow him: submitting to a Savior who, through his own submission for us, is able to restore us and fulfill us.

It’s possible to talk about Jesus as Lord and yet still live much of your life like you’re expecting him to submit to your will rather than you to his. We might think we know what’s best for our lives or just that we have the clearest understanding of our deepest desires. But as we continue reading about the relationship between Jesus and the Father, we see that giving up control and following the rule of a God who both fully knows you and fully loves you is actually the freest we can be.

Throughout these six verses, Jesus uses the word “for” four times to connect the progression of his thought. And so, building on Jesus’ submission to the Father, we see the reason why we can trust him is found in verse 20, which leads to our second statement: Because Jesus is loved by the Father and fully reveals him, we can be known and follow his work. Let’s read the verse.

John 5:20 ESV

²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.

You can’t fully understand verse 19 without what Jesus says here in verse 20 (and vice versa). Because here, Jesus introduces the motivation that frames why he obeys the Father perfectly in submission in verse 19 and why the Father shows him all that he does in verse 20—it’s because of their love for one another.

Think about it. If I were to tell you that I had a great investment opportunity, and we were looking for someone to put in the same amount of startup capital as I was, there’s probably a lot of things that would go through your mind. But before you would even entertain the idea, you’d need to know at least one thing: Does this guy care about me? Does he have my best interest at heart? Because if I don’t, and you do what I ask, then I could easily use it to take advantage of you.

We will not put ourselves into a vulnerable position with someone, we won’t submit to someone’s authority over our life, unless at least one of two things is true: either because we have to, or because we trust the person leading us actually cares about us.

Within the community of God, the Father loves the Son perfectly. 1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love, and so within the eternal love of God, of course the Son can willingly and joyfully submit to the Father. Of course he can step into the greatest form of vulnerability imaginable, emptying himself, taking on the penalty of our sin, and dying on a cross.

Not because that was something fun to do—remember, he asked the Father in the garden of Gethsemane if it was at all possible to let “this cup” pass from him. But Jesus ultimately said, “Not my will but yours be done” because he knew and experienced the perfect love of the Father.

And really, vulnerability is the only way toward deepening love with another person. At the start of a romantic relationship, people often present the best version of themselves. They’re careful with how they look or what they say. But at some point, if the relationship is going to get real, one of the two people has to be the first to choose to get real—to share something hard, something sad, or something unflattering.

When we as broken and sinful people allow ourselves to be known by other broken and sinful people, we risk being rejected rather than loved. But not so within God. Jesus was both fully known and fully loved by the Father, so he willingly submitted to him. And now in verse 20 we read that, because of the Father’s love for the Son, he has chosen to make his work fully known to him. Their perfect knowledge of one another fuels their love for one another which frames how they give to one another.

Why does this matter for us? Two things. First, God fully knows you. He’s not waiting on you to take the first step and “get real”, so he can learn something deep about you. Scripture says he knows the number of hairs on your head; he knew every one of your days before you had lived any of them.

He knows the deepest (and the darkest) parts of your life. He knows they ways you’ve looked to other things to fulfill you instead of him and the ways you’ve fallen short of his righteousness in your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

God fully knows you… and that didn’t keep him from sending his Son to redeem you. He sent Jesus, not because he was ignorant of his people, but because he loves his people. To be fully known, but not loved is a terrifying thing. To be fully loved, but not known is a fleeting thing. But to be both fully known and fully loved is a glorious thing. It’s the foundation of why you can trust both trust in him and submit to him with every part of your life.

But second, because Jesus knows the Father’s work perfectly and submits to the Father’s leading perfectly as he does whatever the Father does, that means the work of Jesus reveals to us the very character of God. The kind of preaching we do here at Restoration is called “exegetical” preaching. It means that, instead of looking at a theme or talking about how a passage of Scripture might make us feel or jumping right to the practical, we want to draw out the exact meaning of a text, understand it, and apply it to our lives.

That’s exactly what the life and ministry of Jesus does for us and our relationship with God—he exegetes the Father to us, drawing out and revealing God’s character and his will. The life of the Christian is built on looking to the person and work of Jesus—whether he’s the main character of a text like here in John, or he’s the foundation of the text like in the rest of the letters of the New Testament, or when he’s the climax and fulfillment of every type and promise we find in the Old Testament—we look to the person and work of Jesus to understand what he’s done, who God is, and how his work applies to our lives.

He is more than enough, and he reveals to us everything we can know about our great God. That’s why verse 20 ends giving a reason behind the works that the Father shows the Son. Jesus says, so that you—meaning the Jews that just witnessed him healing the man who couldn’t walk, as well as us today—so that you may marvel.

He was telling them that because the Father loves him perfectly and reveals to him all that he’s doing, when we observe the works that Jesus accomplished during his ministry—which only get greater from healing the man who couldn’t walk here to dying for our sins and resurrecting from the grave—looking at his works is how we marvel at the majesty of our God as he’s revealed to us.

For those of us who are Christians this morning, when is the last time you looked to the person and work of Jesus and marveled? I can be so prone to forget—for things to become commonplace. At the same time, we don’t really marvel at stories that don’t feel real or tangible to us.

But as we keep reading in verses 21-22, we’re reminded that, through Christ, we don’t just experience God’s love; we’re changed by his power. And that power is still at work in our lives today. Here’s statement number 3: Because Jesus has been given the Father’s power to life and judgment, we can feel safe and motivated to put sin to death in our lives. Let’s keep reading.

John 5:21–22 ESV

²¹ For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. ²² For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,

In verse 20, Jesus said the Father would show him even greater works than healing the man at the pool, and now he tells us what those are: giving new life and giving final judgment. There’s no greater power than to create life. In chapter 1 we read that the Son of God was the Word of God who gave life to everything. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” In chapter 3, we learned of our spiritual need for a new life, that we must be “born again”.

Dead things can’t make themselves come alive, and so we need something spiritual to give us a new heart and spiritually raise us to a new life. Now, in verse 21 of chapter 5, Jesus tells us that this is the work of both the Father and the Son. Later in the gospel of John, we’ll learn about the Holy Spirit’s role in our salvation as well, but here we see in summary what Jesus will go into much more detail in chapter 6: that God alone can give new life, and Jesus joins the Father in this miraculous work, giving life to whom he will (which we’ll come back to more in a bit).

But while the Father works in coordination with the Son to give new life and redemption from our sin against God, we read in verse 22 that he has delegated all judgment to the Son. The general nature of this expression tells us that Jesus has the final judgment in mind here when Christ one day returns victorious to gather his people and consummate his kingdom in a new heaven and new earth.

And we need both. We need both his gift of life and his commitment to judgment. If Christ only redeemed us, we’d experience his mercy, but we wouldn’t grasp his holiness. If he only judged us, we would see him as holy, but we’d fear him like Adam and Eve did when they sinned and hid from him in the garden in shame. The gospel is good news because we experience both God’s mercy and his justice together through Christ.

Because our God doesn’t let the evil in the world go without justice, we can trust that he’ll correct the wrong things that have been done to us. And because our God desires to mercifully raise his people to new life, we can have confidence that God’s righteousness doesn’t mean he has to end us—he’s actually able to rescue us and change us.

When we look to the cross of Christ, we see the glorious marriage of God’s mercy and justice—so righteous that he can’t let the evil that exists apart from his goodness go without justice, but so loving that he mercifully takes that justice onto himself so that we can experience his acceptance. That’s a God we can both trust is for us but is also committed to what’s best for us.

If a friend only ever told you what was wrong with you and teased you, it would be hard to spend much time with him. He’d be a bummer to be around. At some point, when there’s only jokes about all your shortcomings, you gotta wonder, “Does this guy actually care about me?”

Many people have that view of the God of the Bible because of their understanding of sin. If I only hear how much of a sinner I am, then why would I want to be around that God. Does he even like me?

But the friend who only ever supports you and seems to think all your ideas are awesome and never challenges you or confronts you—they’re not helping you either. You’re still left wondering, What do you really think about me?

Neither type of friend will help you grow as a person because they’re unwilling to hold both truth and love together. God doesn’t just confront us that we’re the problem and expect us to be the solution. No, he is our solution for us.

That commitment to both truth and love, justice and mercy, is why we can feel safe enough in our relationship with God to actually try to change and live our lives more to glorify God. Not because we need to make amends for the ways we’ve fallen short and not to impress or earn God’s affection.

When you repent of your sin—and by that I mean, when you turn from the ways you’ve been trying to rule your own life instead of submitting to the kind rule of our loving God, and instead trust in the work that has been accomplished for you in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in your place—God’s commitment to righteousness and truth doesn’t change. His stance against your sin doesn’t change. But it has been forgiven. More than that, the penalty for your sin has been transferred and paid.

Now, you have the space and the freedom to learn what it means to joyfully submit to the rule of God in your life and flee from sin as you live for him—not in order to earn God’s love, but out of the overflow and safety of God’s love that’s already been applied. The Christian motivation for holy living isn’t one of accomplishment, and it’s not one of fear—it’s one of gratitude (which means it’s an act of worship; it’s driven by our love for God because he has first loved us).

It’s out of this understanding of both God’s power and mercy toward us that we come to build our lives around honoring him as we find here at the end of our passage in verses 23-24. Here’s our fourth and final statement: Because Jesus is worthy of the same honor as the Father, we can only worship the Father by believing in the work of Jesus. Let’s read one more time, starting in verse 23.

John 5:23–24 ESV

²³ that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

At the start of verse 23, the word “for” that’s been connecting each relational aspect of the Father and the Son is no longer there. It disappears as Jesus now culminates his train of thought with the word “that” or “so that”. This is the end, no longer just the means. And he says the Father’s authority, character, and work is revealed through the Son so, “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.” The end of all that we know and learn about God is the everlasting worship of God.

It’s why we exist, and it’s why Jesus was sent, and we read in verse 24 that the only way we can do it—the only way we can experience this new life and be reconciled in relationship with God is through hearing and believing in the person and work of Jesus. He reveals the Father to us, he reconciles us with him, and he changes us for him. Back in verse 21, Jesus said the Son gives life to “whom he will”. And now we see those whom he gives life to are those who believe in him.

As we look to the relationship between the Father and the Son this morning, you’re not being invited to earn something or to create something. You’re invited to enter the loving community of our triune God and find your greatest peace and purpose in life by marveling and submitting to him.

Let’s pray.