I'm not trying to start a war here or anything, but I looked at John 5:18 a little closer tonight.
In the preceding verses Jesus answers the Jews who were persecuting him for working on the Sabbath by saying "My Father works until now, and I work" (MKJV). Then the Jews became incensed at him because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was calling God his Father, making himself equal to God. I think it is important to note that Jesus did not call himself equal to God here, the Jews did. I'm not aware of any passage where Jesus outrightly says, I am God.
In verse 19 Jesus stated that he only does what he observes the Father doing.
First of all, the text does not say that the Jews called Jesus equal to God. In fact, it is the narrator who says this. He does not say that it was in the minds of the Jews that Jesus was making himself equal to God; he says that they were upset "because (hoti) ... he was making himself (heauton poión) equal to God," i.e. what Jesus was doing was indeed making himself equal to God, which was blasphemy to them. The same expression occurs in John 19:7: "According to that Law he ought to die, because he was making himself (heauton epoiésen) the Son of God". Like the previous text in 5:18, the Jews wanted to execute Jesus for blasphemy for presenting himself as the Son of God. Was this a mistaken view of theirs that he was presenting himself as the Son of God when he in fact was not? No, the narrator clearly shares this belief. What he doesn't share is the view that such claims were blasphemy for Jesus. Moreover in the same sentence in 5:18, the narrator also says that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath and he presents Jesus as acknowledging this fact but defending himself by claiming elsewhere that it can be righteous to break the Sabbath (John 7:21-24, 9:16; cf. Matthew 12:5).
In his reply in 5:19ff, Jesus does mention his subordination in role to the Father ("The Son can do nothing by himself, he can only do what he sees the Father doing," 5:19), so this could suggest that Jesus in fact was not equal to God. Yet the point of the discourse is that through obeying the will of the Father, the Son has all the authority, power, and ability that God himself has. Thus he says: "Whatever the Father does the Son does too" (v. 19), "As the Father gives life to anyone he chooses, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses" (v. 20-21), "He has entrusted all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father" (v. 22-23), "the Father who is the source of life has made the Son the source of life" (v. 25-26), etc. All these statements emphasize the equality of the Son with the Father as it pertains to works on earth (particularly, "giving life"), which is precisely the situation described in 8:10-18, concerning Jesus healing people on the Sabbath. As it concerns the works Jesus was doing, Jesus affirms that he is indeed God's equal and repeatedly affirmed his equivalence with God in doing "whatever the Father does," in "giving life to anyone he chooses," in being "the source of life," and in being worthy of the same honor accorded to God.
Now, later theologians have read more meaning into the text than is really there (i.e. using it as a proof-text for ontological equality in substance between the Son and Father, against any ontological subordinationist and/or Arian views), but it does assert that the Son is God's equal in performing the work that he was entrusted with. This compares very well with the qualitative use of theos in John 1:1 to describe the Logos as having the same traits that God has (i.e. whatever God is, the Logos is as well).
Futher, at Philipians 2:6, Paul writes that Christians should have the same attitude as Jesus...to be like God? No, rather to not consider ourselves to ever be equal to God.
Paul uses the liturgical fragment in 2:6-11 as a lesson on how members of the church should treat each other, "always consider the other person as better than yourself" (2:3). Paul was quite clear that in reality all brothers in the church were equals and none were superior to the other (Romans 10:12, Galatians 3:26-29), so by advising them to think less of themselves he was not implying that some brothers were actually inferior to others. He was recommending them to go further than merely treating each other as equals but to regard the other person "as better than yourself".
