John 5:19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.
John 5:20 “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.
John 15:9 “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
As man, Jesus lived an absolutely surrendered life, manifested in total obedience. It has always stirred me that He, in absolute submission, only did those things He saw the Father doing and only said those things He heard the Father saying. What is even more remarkable is that He, as man, always knew.
In John 20, He told us that as the Father sent Him, He was sending us. He even told us in John 14 that we would do even greater works than He did. Now, the kind of relationship He had with the Father was so powerful that He was always in step with Him. The only possible way I could ever do what He did, and even greater things, would be for me to be as yielded to Him as He was to the Father, and for me to be as aware of what He is doing and saying as He was of what the Father was doing and saying.
Most of us think the second part is the hardest, but actually it’s the first. Our greatest challenge is to take up our cross daily, and in flesh denial, live a radically surrendered life. That’s the challenging part. Once you begin to progress in obedience, hearing and seeing isn’t hard at all.
Notice Jesus’ confidence, in verse 20, that He would always know what the Father was doing. His confidence was in the Fathers love. He said it’s because the Father loves the Son that the Father will always show Him what He is up to, so that Jesus could participate. In 15:9 Jesus tells us that just as the Father loved Him, He has loved us. If that is true, can’t I be confident that, out of love, Jesus will always show me what He is doing in every situation, so that I can participate, thus allowing Him to do His works through me, just as through His participation, He allowed the Father to do His works through Him. What amazing possibilities. Being a Christian is so awesome.