Jesus answered the Jews:
“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”
For this reason they tried all the more to kill him,
because he not only broke the sabbath
but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.

Jesus answered and said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own,
but only what he sees the Father doing;
for what he does, the Son will do also.
For the Father loves the Son
and shows him everything that he himself does,
and he will show him greater works than these,
so that you may be amazed.
For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life,
so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes.
Nor does the Father judge anyone,
but he has given all judgment to the Son,
so 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.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word
and believes in the one who sent me
has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,
but has passed from death to life.
Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,
and those who hear will live.
For just as the Father has life in himself,
so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself.
And he gave him power to exercise judgment,
because he is the Son of Man.
Do not be amazed at this,
because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs
will hear his voice and will come out,
those who have done good deeds
to the resurrection of life,
but those who have done wicked deeds
to the resurrection of condemnation.

“I cannot do anything on my own;
I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just,
because I do not seek my own will
but the will of the one who sent me.” Jn 5:17:30

I struggled with this passage for years. It is the part where Jesus starts out by saying “the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.” Yep, that sentence right there has had me hung up for years. I now understand why I have been so caught up on that sentence, and it is time to shed new light into this passage.

I have written before about the father that I have. While he is a good man at the core, as most people are, he did not do me any services when I was growing up. He caused lots of unstable times in my childhood, and to be honest, in some ways, kept me from growing as a person. There were relationships that I did not take on because of the fact that I didn’t know who was going to show up at night. That, however, is just like yesterday, all in the past. I have worked very hard to leave those moments there, and not to let them impact the present day. Needless to say, at first glance on this part of the passage, I did not have a great role model when it came to my father. I learned the things that I do not want to be, and what I strive not to do. In essence I have been taking a worldly view of this the entire time.

At the time these words were said to the Jewish population, I am pretty sure they probably had some of the same struggles I did with it. At that moment in history, the human relationship with God was very distant. It is the same relationship I have had with my own father in life, very distant. At a certain point, I knew he exists, but had no idea what he was doing. Now, Jesus is talking to everyone about how God was his Father. It was such a new concept, and for me, it is really also a fairly new concept. I have always seen myself as a child of God, but never really dug down deep in to the meaning behind that. Well, as most mornings, listening to Mass on the way into work, this message finally hit me.

My true Father is God. Everything that I should be doing is the will of my Father. He is the one that is going to teach me how to really live. I had been looking at this for so long as someone apart of this world and missed the message all together. If I am emulating the real Father in my life, then I am going down the right path. I have to allow Him to teach me what to do, and learn from Him. So simple, yet I let my past dealings here in the world block the real message from getting through.