God the Father and God the Son

So, let’s get back to “the one and only Son.” We already looked at the verses in John’s prologue, vs. 14 and 18, now let’s look at them in the passage we are comparing to the prologue right now.
In John 3, we see “the one and only Son” in verses 16 and 18, but it is also a little less direct in verse 17 “God did not send his Son ... to condemn.” (If we rearrange the sentence construction, we see that God did send his Son into the world to save the world through him.)
In the prologue, John specifically showed us that the Son is fully God – v. 1 “the Word was God,” v. 19 “who is himself God.” We also saw the distinction between the Father, who is God and the Son, who is also God (v. 14). Here in John 3 we see that distinction emphasized – God “gave his one and only Son” (v. 16), God sent his Son in verse 17, “God’s one and only Son” (v. 18). To fully understand these statements about God and his Son, we need to connect back to verse 14 in the prologue were we were first introduced to the idea of the Father and Son – the Son came from the Father.
Jesus calls God his Father more than 90 other times in the Gospel of John, including two statements that undeniably put himself on an equal footing with God the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (John 14:10-11). (John also repeats the Father-Son relationship 14 times in his epistles and five times in Revelation.) With all this evidence, there can be no doubt that both the Father and the Son are truly God, and yet ....
Though they are equally God, Jesus has submitted himself to God the Father. He “came from the Father” (John 1:14); he was given by God, was sent (John 3:16, 17). This submission of the Son to the Father is seen frequently in John - 5:43; 6:57; 8:42; 10:18; 12:27; 13:3; 14:24; 15:10; 17:1; 18:11; 20:21 (not an exhaustive list).
Lest you think this was an easy submission, remember what Jesus came for. In John 3:14, he said "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up." (Jesus was speaking of the crucifixion.) All of the gospel writers tell us that the man Jesus struggled with submitting to the agony the Father had asked his Son to endure (John 12:27; Matthew 26:38-39, 42; Mark 14:34, 36; Luke 22:42, 44).
What is the significance for us? Think on that yourself. I’ll give a brief answer (a thorough answer would take another half dozen blogs) and finish up this exploration of God as Father and Son in my next blog, then move on to look at “believe” in our two passages.