John 8:19

‘They therefore said to him, “Where is your Father?” '

They responded to His challenge by putting the question, ‘where is your father?'. It may well be that they had mistaken His meaning and were genuinely confused. He kept speaking of His Father. Well, where was his father? Surely his father was dead? How then could he be a source of information? On the other hand it is possible that they were merely trying to blur the issue by speaking in terms of an earthly father because they did not want to accept His claim that God was His Father. Either way it enabled Him to press home His message.

This is another example of how, throughout the Gospel, John constantly uses the misunderstanding of men to act as a platform to bring out the truth. Their reply is that if as He says he has two witnesses, let Him produce the other one. Let them see Him so that they can judge for themselves.

‘You do not know either me or my Father, if you knew me you would know my Father also'.

Jesus' simple reply was that it was not possible for them to see the Father because they were spiritually blind. That is why they did not know the Father, nor recognise Him. In fact their failure to see what He meant was itself significant. They possibly thought they were being clever but they were really indicating that they did not know either Who He was or Who His Father was. They were demonstrating their spiritual blindness, and proving that they did not know God.

For the truth was that the fact that they did not recognise Him for what He was, demonstrated that they did not really know what God was like. For had they really known the Father and what He was like, they would have recognised His Father in Him and in what He was doing. How then can He tell them of the Father? Of what use would it be? Their minds are equally closed to knowledge of the Father.

This made clear that they were really spiritually blind. In spite of all He was saying and doing, which revealed the glory of God, their minds would not or could not grasp it. If then they could not recognise the truth when it was revealed by the Father through Him on earth, how could they claim to know the Father?

It simply demonstrated that with all their claim to special knowledge they actually did not know God. This was indeed the real reason why they failed to recognise Him. They were still in darkness. For as the light of the world He had come to reveal the Father, and if they would but come to see Him for what He was, by considering His words and His activities, and what He was in Himself, and would respond to Him, then they would really come to know the Father too (compare John 14:7). But they did not do so because they were in darkness.