“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me, the Father.” (John 5:30)

Reading: John 5:30-39

Jesus always emphasized that He did not speak His own words, but those of the Father: “The word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” (John 14:24). “For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God” (John 3:34). “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (John 7:17).

Jesus never spoke on His own authority. He spoke what He heard from the Father. He lived in such close relationship with the Father that the Father’s word reached Him, and this was the word He passed on to the world: “He who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him” (John 8:26). Jesus listened to the Father’s voice. In His times of communion alone with the Father, the Father spoke to Him. Jesus was the Father’s messenger. When He preached, He preached what He had heard the Father say. In private conversations, the words that came from His mouth were those He had heard the Father speak. Instead of saying that Jesus was a great speaker, it would be more accurate to say that Jesus was a great listener. His words were not original or His own; they were the Father’s. Those who say Jesus was a brilliant orator would do better to say He was a faithful transmitter of what He had heard from the Father.

Speaking prophetically about Jesus, Isaiah wrote: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear” (Isaiah 50:4-5). Jesus listened well to the Father’s words because the Father opened His ear. This is what Jesus Himself affirmed. He gave all the glory to the Father—the glory of His beautiful and wise words and the glory of making this communication possible. Such was His absolute dependence on the Father. As a result, Jesus had words of eternal life to minister to the weary. From the Father, Jesus also received instructions for Himself to fulfill His will: “I was not rebellious; I did not turn back” (v.5). Jesus heard that the plan included Calvary, and He did not turn back.

The Holy Spirit follows the same pattern. He does not speak on His own authority but speaks what He hears from the Father: “But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak” (John 16:13). If the blessed, perfect, and eternal Son of God did not speak or act on His own but always in obedience to the Father—if He did not speak whatever came to His mind, but only what He heard from the Father—how much more should we depend totally on the Father for our words and the direction of our lives! We must learn to listen to the Father’s voice! We will never transmit it perfectly—our hearing will always be affected by sin—but this is our journey, so that we may say with increasing accuracy: “You have opened my ears… I delight to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:6-7).