Someone please convince me that I cannot do anything on my own!

[iaskquestions]

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

“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 he does, that the Son does likewise.”” (John 5:19)

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Jesus is asking us to take his yoke upon us. That implies that he is already yoked - to the Father. So is it that we always have to pull together (being yoked ourselves) with Jesus and the Father? What are we pulling together? And what does Jesus mean when he says that apart from him we can do** nothing**? In fact, he also shows such dependence on the Father.

 

[Usagi]

Well, we can do nothing without Him in quite a literal sense, in that He sustains our existence at every moment, and we would simply cease if He ever stopped.

Likewise, and probably more apropos for the context of the quotation you’re asking about, without His grace we can do nothing supernaturally good, nothing meriting reward in Heaven.

We are also “yoked together” with each other in a very real sense, as the Mystical Body of Christ. When the members of the Body are working at cross purposes, our mission in the world is impaired.

As for the Son’s dependence on the Father, again there is a sense in which that is so. The Trinity is one Being that always wills and acts as One, even though the Godhead includes three Persons that are truly distinct and have real relationships among themselves. Further, because of those relationships, the Father has a certain conceptual preeminence within the Trinity. All three Persons are equal in every way from an outside perspective, but in terms of their internal relations, the Father begets the Son and generates the Spirit, not the other way around. That in no way makes the Son or Spirit “lesser gods,” of course, but it would be proper for the Son to speak of being dependent on the Father in a sense.

Usagi