“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 31″If I alone bear witness of Myself, My testimony is not true. 32″There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the testimony which He bears of Me is true,” (John 5:30-32).

Muslims use these verses in their attempt to say that Jesus is not God. They reason that if Jesus were really God in flesh, then He could do anything He wanted to do; but here we see that Jesus says that He can do nothing on His own initiative. If this is true, then how can Jesus be God in flesh?

The answer is that Jesus is both God and man in one person. This doctrine is called the hypostatic union. As a man, Jesus was under the law and was obligated to keep the law (Gal. 4:4). In His humbled state of being lower than the angels (Heb. 2:9), Jesus was cooperating with the limitations of being a man (Phil. 2:5-8). Therefore, He was in complete subjection to the Father so that He might fulfill the law and be the high priest sacrifice for our sins (Heb. 5:10).

Furthermore, Jesus did not begin His miracles until His baptism. It was at that point that the Holy Spirit came upon Him. Therefore, Jesus was performing His miracles not by His own power but by the power of the Holy Spirit. This explains why in Matt. 12:22-32 when the Pharisees said that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of the devil, Jesus said that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. In other words, Jesus was doing His miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit and not under His own divine power which He had laid aside the rightful use of while he walked this earth doing the Father’s will.

Therefore, these verses do not mean that Jesus is not divine; but it does mean that Jesus, as a man, was completely and totally in submission to the will of the Father, and that Jesus would only do the will of the Father as the text clearly says.

Muslims love to quote John 5:30 where Jesus says this:

“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. (John 5:30, ESV)

The reason they do this is because it shows Jesus telling us that he seeks the will of the one that sent him.

They love this because they have absolutely no evidence that Islam existed before Muhammad did, and the only thing they can come up with is to say that Islam means submission and that those in the Old Testament that submitted to God were obviously Muslims because they submitted their will to God.

Never mind the fact that every single religion that ever existed that had a god mandates that you submit your will to their God. So what they are in essence saying is that Islam says the exact same thing that every other religion that ever existed says about their God.

What you will never ever see a Muslim post even one time is John 5:19 that has Jesus making the exact same statement, but with the reason he says it. Muslims don’t want you to know the reason he said this statement; they want to mislead you and deceive and that is the reason they will never post this statement from John 5:19, even though it’s the exact same statement.

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. (John 5:19, ESV)

But the other reason they will never ever post this verse is because it shows even more proof that Jesus is one with the father. Muslims want to suggest that Jesus being one with the father is no different than Jesus being one with us and they will refer you to John 17 20-23.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23, ESV)

But Jesus makes it clear that being one with the father for him is far different and much more intimate. He literally sees what the father does and does likewise. This is more proof that Jesus is literally one with the father and literally God. No other prophet, or any other human being for that matter, could make the same statement.