John 8:19

19 They asked, "Where is your father?" Jesus answered, "You don't know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father, too."

John 8:19 Meaning and Commentary

John 8:19

Then said they unto him, where is thy Father?
&c.] The Persic version adds, "show [him] unto us": produce this witness boasted of, let us see him; this they said in a sneering, taunting, and insulting manner; where is thy Father? what! he is in Galilee; fetch him from thence; it is Joseph the carpenter you mean; a goodly witness indeed!

Jesus answered, ye neither know me nor my Father; if ye had known
me, ye should have known my Father also;
they did not know the divine original of Christ, that he was the Son of God, and that God was his Father; they greatly boasted of their knowledge of God, but they knew him not; their ignorance of Christ showed it: the knowledge of both go together, and which is life eternal; nor can any truly know the one, without the other: and where the one is known, the other will be also; Christ is the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person: so that he that has seen the one, must know the other; and indeed, no one can know the Father, but he to whom the Son reveals him: this was a severe mortification to these men of knowledge.

John 8:19 In-Context

17 Your own law says that when two witnesses say the same thing, you must accept what they say.

18 I am one of the witnesses who speaks about myself, and the Father who sent me is the other witness."

19 They asked, "Where is your father?" Jesus answered, "You don't know me or my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father, too."

20 Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the Temple, near where the money is kept. But no one arrested him, because the right time for him had not yet come.

21 Again, Jesus said to the people, "I will leave you, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot come where I am going."