This may only be my second post but it was a struggle to write. I knew I wanted to write about what I came across during a Bible study, but I still got sidetracked trying to write about other things. I finally scrapped those and started this post but it craved a resolution that I couldn’t seem to find. I finally found it last night at a (different) women’s Bible study, alongside some of the most faithful women I know. Please keep in mind that this post would not exist if it were not for both of those communities. Please keep in mind, specifically, the word community.

This post was born back in August, when I came across this verse:

I can do nothing on my own.

Jesus said that. The Gospel of John, chapter 5, verse 30.

I can do nothing on my own.

To say that out loud seems almost silly. Of course we can do things on our own. Jesus was God – he of all people could do things on his own. He did not say, I desire to, or I will, or I should do nothing on my own. He said: I can do nothing on my own. What a definitive statement, and slightly jarring coming from someone who over and over claimed to be God. What kind of God cannot?

I quickly realized that by reading the statement literally, as in, “I cannot eat on my own” or “I cannot wake up on my own,” I was approaching it the wrong way. There are, of course, plenty of things that Jesus could physically do on his own. That could not have been the point he was making.

So I placed the verse in context. This statement came in a teaching Jesus delivered to the Jewish leaders just after healing an invalid man on the Sabbath. The Jewish leaders were angry about the healing because they believed Jesus had broken the sacred commandment to rest on the Sabbath. In response, Jesus claimed equality with God by describing his relationship with the Father with several iterations of I can do nothing on my own. He said, in part, “My Father is working until now, and I am working. … The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.” (John 5:17, 19)

Within this context, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t speaking about limitations. He was speaking about relationship.

Jesus existed in deep and abiding community with the other members of the Trinity. As God, he and the Father are One: a concept that is difficult for me to understand. They are so intertwined that it was impossible for him to act independently of that relationship. Everything he said and did on earth, including the healing of the invalid man, flowed from that One-ness in which he exists with the Father. He could do nothing on his own because he was not alone and therefore everything he did was in One-ness with the Father.

As man, Jesus could do nothing alone because he leaned on the Father for guidance, strength, and sustenance. Many times he is recorded spending time alone in prayer. He said “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and accomplish his work.” (John 4:34) And at the end of his life when faced with the cross he said “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

So what does this mean for us?

This answer also came from the book of John. In his last teaching to his disciples before he is arrested, Jesus said:

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:4-5

Did you catch that?

“Abide in me…for apart from me you can do nothing.”

This is an invitation: a startling, stunning invitation to relationship with Jesus. Jesus modeled what it looked like to abide with the Father, both in obedience and power, and then he invites us to abide with him. He offers us the chance to abide – to dwell – to make our home – to spend our time – in community with him. By his nature he existed in One-ness with the Father, and by our nature we are estranged from the Father. Yet here he is, speaking out of this glorious One-ness with God, inviting us to abide with him.

If there is a call here to community with Christ I think there is also a call for the Church to find community with each other. In John 17 Jesus prays to the Father for the church and asks repeatedly that “they may be one, even as we are one.” That is a MIGHTY request, and one that I think may have already been granted.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this entire post was born out of discussions I had with women within my own small community. Dwelling in community with other believers sharpens us to the works that the Father has granted we accomplish. It drives us forward. We challenge each other. We encourage each other. We surprise each other. Sometimes we hurt each other. But through it all there is that undercurrent of one-ness granted to us from the prayer of Jesus: the gift of life with our faces turned towards the same sunrise, the same breath in our lungs, and the same song on our lips.