John 5:19
John 5:1919So Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.
The Watchtower reads this verse as a clear statement of the Son's subordination to the Father — "the Son cannot do a single thing of his own initiative." JWs deploy it to argue that Jesus is a lesser figure, dependent on the Father, and therefore not God in any equal sense. The phrase is treated as a permanent ontological description rather than as a description of the unity of action between Father and Son in the work of redemption.
Read the verse to its end. "Whatever things that One does, these things the Son does also in like manner." That is not a confession of inability — it is a claim of inseparable operation. The Son cannot act independently of the Father precisely because what the Son does is what the Father does. A king's loyal son does not act independently of the king; that is not weakness, it is unity. And the verses that follow walk straight into divine prerogatives: raising the dead and giving life (verse 21), receiving all judgment (verse 22), receiving honour equal to the Father (verse 23). The "cannot do anything of his own" of verse 19 is the premise from which Jesus argues that whatever the Father does the Son also does — including the works that belong to God alone.
The NWT renders aph' heautou as "of his own initiative" rather than the more natural "of himself" or "on his own." The rendering is defensible but adds an emphasis on volitional subordination that the Greek does not require — useful to a Christology that pictures the Son as taking orders from a hierarchically superior Father rather than as acting in inseparable union with him.