Jesus said … “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” …“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” John 5:17,19,20a
Consider this definition of love: To love someone is to work with Jesus to create optimum conditions for that person to choose to become God’s friend.
Note the assumption I am making in that statement, that God is always looking for friends. When Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work.” I’m persuaded that is what is meant — that day and night in each and every human heart God is looking for a new friend.
Jesus goes on to say, “And I too am working” and that he doesn’t take any initiative in what he does but only does “what he sees the Father doing.” Put that all together and we have Jesus co-working with the Father in every human heart, doing only what his Father initiates, all in the interests of making a new friend or deepening an existing friendship.
That to me is a perfect picture of what is to define our friendship with Jesus. He is always at his work — the work of his Father — and we join him in coworking with him to win friends for God too.
Notice what the upper limit of that work actually is, be it the Father’s work, that of Jesus, or our work: it is to create optimum conditions for a favorable response. Force in any way, shape, or form, is out, because that violates the voluntary nature of love. That is why we seek to only do what we see Jesus doing because in acting on his Father’s initiative only he knows just what those optimum conditions are.
What does it mean to “see” Jesus at his work? It would seem to me to be made up of two things operating in tandem. We listen to another person, paying careful attention to them and where they’re at while we simultaneously listen for guidance from Jesus as to what he wants us to think, pray, do, or say.
Not only are optimum conditions then put in place for that person to respond to Jesus, but we cement our friendship with Jesus too because he said, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” John 15:14
