The Omniscient Christ of “Q”

There is a saying found in both Matthew and Luke, which scholars have called the “Synoptic Johannine Thunderbolt.” The reason being is that it sounds like a statement that someone would most likely find in John’s Gospel. Certain scholars even think that these words of Jesus are actually derived from a common source employed by Matthew and Luke typically referred to as “Q” (quelle), the German word for “saying”. It is believed that this hypothetical source was a collection of Jesus’ sayings that was composed quite early, within the first generation of the eyewitnesses. As such, this is most definitely an authentic statement from Jesus which was being passed on his own followers.   

I present the Lukan account of Jesus’ words:

“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” Luke 10:22 – Cf. Matthew 11:27

To call this saying astonishing would be putting it mildly.

Jesus as the Son claims to be the only Person who perfectly and completely knows the incomprehensible and omniscient Father, which is something the Scriptures testify is beyond the ability of any creature:

“Who does great things, unsearchable, And wondrous works, innumerable.” Job 9:10

“Can you find the depths of God? Can you find the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth And broader than the sea.” Job 11:7-9  

“Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable.” Job 36:26

“Yahweh, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Yahweh, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And You have put Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.” Psalm 139:1-6

“Great is Yahweh, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.” Psalm 145:3

“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares Yahweh. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.’” Isaiah 55:8-9

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be repaid to him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” Romans 11:33-36

That would be a remarkable enough, but it is what Jesus says in respect to himself that makes his assertion all the more shocking.

Christ states that only the Father is able to know him truly and completely, and that this is a knowledge that is reciprocal. I.e., the Son knows the Father in the same way that the Father knows him, and that only they are able to know and comprehend each other!

In other words, this saying of Jesus implies that the Son, like the Father, is incomprehensible, unsearchable and omniscient, which is why only someone with an omniscient can truly comprehend him!

What do Commentaries and Theologians Say?

I quote the interpretation given by a slew of expositors, theologians and/or apologists from various Christian backgrounds in respect to this astonishing saying of the historical Jesus.

Matthean Account

11:25–30. In contrast with His condemnation on the three Galilean cities (vv. 20–24), Jesus issued a great call to those who in faith would turn to Him. Jesus had previously condemned that generation for their childish reactions (vv. 16–19). Here He declared that true discipleship can be enjoyed only by those who come to Him in childlike faith. God in His good pleasure (cf. Eph. 1:5) had hidden the great mysteries of His wise dealings from the wise and learned (the leaders of that day) but had revealed them to little children. This was possible because God the Son and God the Father know each other perfectly in the intimacy of the Trinity (Matt. 11:27). (“Father” occurs five times in vv. 25–27.) Hence the only ones who can know the Father and the things He has revealed are those whom the Son chooses (cf. John 6:37). (Louis A. Barbieri Jr., “Matthew,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck [Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), Volume 2, pp. 44–45; emphasis mine)

And here is what this commentary states in respect to the Son’s ignorance of the day or hour:

24:36–41 (Mark 13:32–33; Luke 17:26–37). The precise moment of the Lord’s return cannot be calculated by anyone. When the Lord spoke these words, that information was said to be known by only the Father. Christ was obviously speaking from the vantage of His human knowledge (cf. Luke 2:52), not from the standpoint of His divine omniscience. But the period before His coming will be like the time in the days of Noah. People then were enjoying the normal pursuits of life, with no awareness of imminent judgment. Life continued normally for the people of Noah’s day for they were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. But the Flood came and took them all away. It was sudden and they were unprepared. (Ibid., pp. 78-79; emphasis mine)

13:32. Though it will be possible for some to discern the proximity of the coming crisis (vv. 28–29), yet no one knows the precise moment when that day or hour will arrive (cf. v. 33) except the Father. Not even the angels (cf. 1 Peter 1:12) nor the Son know. This openly expressed limitation on Jesus’ knowledge affirms His humanity. In His Incarnation Jesus voluntarily accepted human limitations, including this one (cf. Acts 1:7), in submission to the Father’s will (cf. John 4:34). On the other hand Jesus’ use of “the Son” title (only here in Mark) instead of the usual “Son of Man” revealed His own awareness of His deity and sonship (cf. Mark 8:38). Nevertheless He exercised His divine attributes only at the Father’s bidding (cf. 5:30; John 8:28–29). (Ibid., p. 172; emphasis mine)

I delve further into the expositors:

27. The contents of this verse are closely connected with the allusion to scribal piety in 25. The ‘tradition of the elders’ (15:2 f.), the technical terms of which are Masora (delivery, i.e. from one Rabbi to another) and Cabbala (reception), instead of leading them to a direct knowledge of God, blinds their spiritual perception. With this our Lord contrasts the direct ‘tradition’ of truth by the Father to the Son. Jesus is the true and perfect Mediator of the revelation of God to men (cf. Jn 17). The ‘tradition’ which He represents comes from God. In Him is the true Masora. What is said of Moses (Dt 34:10–12) is true in a much higher degree of Him. The Father, in the work of making Himself known to men, has no organ but the Son, and they possess a perfect and exclusive knowledge, the One of the Other. Moreover, as the will of God, so the will of Jesus reveals the truth only to the receptive (‘whomsoever the Son will’). But the Son Himself is not only the Mediator of revelation who communicates to the receptive the knowledge of God, but is Himself a mystery open to God alone. ‘There is nothing in the New Testament which carries us further than this, and nothing more is wanted to justify completely the attitude of Christian faith to Jesus’ (Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, 272). To Claude Montefiore (The Synoptic Gospels) 27 is a great stumbling-block: ‘The exclusiveness of the saying that “no one knows the Father except the Son” is painful; one can only hope that Jesus never uttered it.’ If we knew nothing about Jesus apart from this utterance, it might well seem staggering. But in His Messianic consciousness He speaks as the personified Divine Wisdom (cf. Pr 8); and the absolute significance of the manifestation of God’s saving power in Him pervades all His teaching. This passage strongly reminds us of the 4th Gospel. But our Lord uses of Himself the title ‘Son’ in just as exclusive a sense in our earliest authority (Mk 13:32, etc.); and this passage almost certainly was found in Q. (P. P. Levertoff, “Special Introduction,” in A New Commentary on Holy Scripture: Including the Apocrypha, ed. Charles Gore, Henry Leighton Goudge, and Alfred Guillaume [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942], Volume 3, p. 156; emphasis mine)

11:27 If vv. 25–26 claim that humility is a prerequisite for receiving God’s revelation, v. 27 adds that one cannot come to God without accepting Christ (cf. 1 John 2:23). “All things” are left unspecified but probably carry the sense of all authority (cf. 28:18). Clearly Jesus and God have a unique relationship. He is God’s Son in a different sense than believers are God’s children (John 1:12). Epiginōskō means more than know, involving the most intimate and fullest acquaintance. The theology is not yet Trinitarian but prepares the way for the references to the Father and Son in the baptismal formula of 28:19. (Craig Blomberg, Matthew, The New American Commentary [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992], vol. 22, p. 193; emphasis mine)

This is further brought out with the assertion that it is only the Father who knows the Son. There were many in the first century who held that the essential being of God is quite unknown; he dwells in unapproachable mystery. It is a quite different thought that the essential being of the Son is not known. Jesus is not now speaking of the relationship of sonship that all the people of God may claim: it is not “a” Son of whom he speaks, but the Son. The Jews, the people of God, had consistently rejected him, so it was plain enough that they did not know the Son; but it is also the case that the disciples who had responded to his call did not have as yet anything like an adequate understanding of his person. It was true of them, too, that they did not really know him, so that it was only the Father who had real knowledge of him. It is interesting that when Peter came to know Jesus as he really is, as the Christ, Jesus said that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, “but my Father” (16:17). In the Lucan parallel we have “who the Son is” (Luke 10:22), and that is the meaning: they did not know who he really was. But the Father did, and it was this that mattered to Jesus, not the hostility of Jewish leaders. The essential being of the Son was not obvious to human observation. Who could see in the carpenter from Nazareth the only Son of God?

To this is added the further thought that no one knows the Father except the Son. The Jews, of course, from their study of the revelation in the Old Testament, had some knowledge of God, but their knowledge was imperfect. Jesus is saying that his knowledge of the Father surpasses that in any revelation made hitherto: he knows the Father as he really is. He has a knowledge of the Father not shared by any of his contemporaries. To this he adds, “and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” This does not mean that those who receive the revelation know the Father in the same intimate way as the Son does. Knowledge that springs from community of nature is not the same as that which comes from revelation. It means rather that it is in him that they come to know God. Those who are willing to receive the revelation in Jesus will have a knowledge of God not open to anyone else. Notice that the revelation is connected with the will of the Son. The revelation of the Father does not come by chance; it comes only to those to whom the Son chooses to make the revelation. The saying ascribes to Jesus the critical place in the revelation of the Father.

“The Son is not only the organ of revelation but is himself a mystery to be revealed; the knowledge of the Father and the knowledge of the Son are two sides of the same mystery, which is now revealed, and so the Father and the Son in fellowship with one another are both subject and object of revelation” (N. B. Stonehouse, Witness, p. 212). Cf. 16:17. (Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, The Pillar New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1992], pp. 293–295; emphasis mine)

27. This verse stands out as a more explicit statement of Jesus’ relationship with the Father than any other in the Synoptic Gospels. It has therefore often been dubbed ‘Johannine’, with the implication that Jesus himself could not have spoken it. But, as Hill sanely remarks, ‘Is it a legitimate canon of criticism that any Synoptic saying which has a parallel in John must ipso facto be spurious?… Without such points of departure in the Synoptic tradition it would be an eternal puzzle how Johannine theology could have originated at all!’ (Hill, p. 205). In particular, the description of Jesus as simply the Son is paralleled in 24:36, and the idea of Jesus as Son of God is, of course, central to this Gospel (2:15; 3:17; 4:3; 6; 8:29; 14:33; 16:16–17; 17:5; 21:37; etc.), while the address to God as ‘Abba’, Father, agreed to be a unique characteristic of Jesus, attests that this relationship was central in his own consciousness.

The relationship implied by the ‘Father’ of v. 25 is here spelt out. There are no secrets between Father and Son (though see 24:36 for an apparent exception). All things refers here (in the light of vv. 25–26) to the knowledge they share; in 28:18 there will be a similar claim in respect of authority. The past tense of have been delivered may indicate the Son’s eternal relationship with the Father before his incarnate life, though this is not explicit here. The rest of the verse is about the mutual knowledge of Father and Son. ‘Know’ in the Old Testament is much more than a mental acquaintance; it is an intimate relationship. The exclusive communion between Father and Son is of the essence of their relationship. For anyone else to share in this knowledge, however, is a matter of revelation, and as such is not a natural right, but a matter of divine choice. Thus God’s sovereign initiative in revelation, set out in vv. 25–26, is applied specifically to our knowledge of God: it does not come naturally (see 1 Cor. 2:6–16 for a spelling out of this theme). It depends on God’s choice, or, more specifically, the Son’s choice. Thus Jesus unequivocally describes himself and his will as the key to men’s approach to the Father; there is no other.

Jeremias (NTT, pp. 59–61) has argued that the definite articles before ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ should be read as generic, making the saying an observation on human relationships—only a father and his son have true mutual knowledge. Linguistically this is possible, though it may be questioned whether it would be a true observation. But if so the point of such an observation in this context could only be to illustrate the mutual knowledge of Jesus and his Father. The Christological implications of the saying would be the same, though more parabolically expressed. (R. T. France, Matthew: An Introduction and Commentary [Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), Volume 1, pp. 202–203; emphasis mine)

Jesus is quietly claiming to be the locus of all revelation. Whatever revelation there may be, dispersed in human intellect andvalues, in virtuous action, in nature and in the history of humankind, the centre of all God’s self-disclosure is Jesus of Nazareth. He fulfils all the hopes of the Old Testament, and is the heart of all revelation. In a dark world lit by candles and lamps, he comes as a searchlight.

If we look closely at this claim, we will see five distinct elements in it.

First, Jesus maintains that God the Father conceals and reveals according to his will. People cannot grasp a Christian understanding of God and Christian relationship with God by their own efforts. They cannot discern who Jesus is, what the kingdom is, unless God shows them. He conceals these things from those who are wise in their own conceits, and reveals them to those who come with childlike trust and teachableness. Whenever anyone comes to faith, there is a divine disclosure to that person.

Secondly, Jesus claims to be the plenipotentiary representative of the Father. He comes from the Father’s side, equipped with the Father’s power and trenchancy, and displaying the compassion of the Father’s heart. He fully represents God, and he comes with God’s own claim on human hearts.

Thirdly, only the Father fully understands Jesus. Not John, not the disciples, not the wise or little children. The mystery of his person is inscrutable this side of heaven. Theologians have spent centuries seeking to reconcile his divine and human natures. It is like trying to square the circle. With the limited discernment of the human mind and heart it cannot be done. It takes God to know God. Only the Father knows the Son. What a claim!

Fourthly, only Jesus fully understands the Father. Great people have discovered and taught many true and noble things about God. Nobody has known him with the intimacy of Jesus, who could call him Abba, dear daddy. When that holy man Mahatma Gandhi was dying, one of his relatives came to him and asked, ‘Babaki, you have been looking for God all your life. Have you found him yet?’ ‘No,’ was the reply. ‘I’m still looking.’

The humility, the earnestness, the sheer goodness of a great teacher like Gandhi shine through a remark like that. But it stands in the most stark contrast with Jesus’ claim in this passage. ‘No-one knows the Father except the Son’ (27). He does not know something about God. He does not even know everything about God. He knows God absolutely. It is simply breathtaking.

And fifthly, because Jesus shares the Father’s nature as well as ours, he and he alone can reveal the Father. He can show us, because he knows. He can introduce us because he belongs: he is the Son.

These five elements go to make up the most astounding claim that has ever been heard on human lips, that the way to know the Father is through Jesus. It reminds us irresistibly of other words of Jesus: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’, and ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’ If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to get through to God, come to Jesus. If you want to discover the epicentre of God’s self-disclosure, you will find it in Jesus.

That is the claim. That is what makes Christianity at once so widely attractive and so widely hated. The sheer exclusivity of the claims drives people in one direction or the other. They do not allow us the comfort of occupying middle ground. Nor can we shrug off the need for decision by saying that these exclusive claims are found only in the Fourth Gospel, which some scholars regard as late and theologically tendentious. The passage before us is every bit as challenging, exclusive and absolute in its claim as anything in the Fourth Gospel, and it is situated in one of the oldest strata of the Gospel tradition, the Q material, sayings of Jesus found in both Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Scholars ascribe a high degree of reliability to this material. C. S. Lewis was right when he said that there is no way of reconciling Jesus’ humility of lifestyle, quality of character and profundity of teaching with the rampant megalomania which must colour his theological claims about himself if he is not God. We are invited to choose how we shall respond to so staggering a claim. (Michael Green, The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven, The Bible Speaks Today [Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001], pp. 140–142; emphasis mine)

Lukan Account

Christ glorifies His Father and magnifies Himself:—Learn hence—1. That till God reveals Himself, His nature and will, no man can know either what He is, or what He requires—“Thou hast revealed.” 2. That the wise and knowing men in the world have in all ages despised the mysteries of the gospel, and have therefore been judicially blinded by God—“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent.” When men shut their eyes against the clearest light, and say they will not see, God closes their eyes and says they shall not see. 3. That the most ignorant, if humble, and desirous of spiritual illumination, are in the readiest disposition to embrace the gospel revelation—“Thou hast revealed them unto babes.” 4. That this is not more pleasing to Christ than it is the pleasure of His Father—“Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” Observe—Our Saviour magnifies Himself: 1. His authority and commission—“All things are delivered unto Me”; that is, all power is committed unto Me, as Mediator, from God the Father. 2. His office to reveal His Father’s will to a lost world—“No man knoweth the Father but the Son, or the Son but the Father”; that is, no man knoweth their essence and nature, their will and pleasure, their counsel and consent, their mutual compact and agreement betwixt themselves, for saving a lost world, but only themselves, “and those to whom they have revealed it.” Learn thence, That all saving knowledge of God is in, by, and through Christ; He, as the Great Prophet of His Church, reveals unto us the mind and will of God for our salvation. (W. Burkitt.)  (Joseph S. Exell, The Bible Illustrator: St. Luke [London: James Nisbet & Co., n.d.), Volume II, pp. 225-226; emphasis mine)

The relation between Father and Son:—1. The highest mystery. 2. A revealed mystery. 3. Even after the revelation yet continually a partially concealed mystery. (Ibid.)

Christ the Revealer of God:—Christ, as you see here, speaks of Himself. What does He say of Himself? 1. Does He not claim to be Divinely constituted as a Revealer of God? “All things are delivered to Me of My Father.” 2. Our Lord speaks here also of the glorious mystery of His own person and character. No man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any intelligence in this or in the heavenly world, knoweth who the Son is but the Father. It takes an Infinite Being to comprehend an Infinite Being. 3. Christ alone knows God in perfection—“No man knoweth who the Father is but the Son.” What an awful sense of loneliness—a loneliness which is unutterable—would be involved in our idea of God, unless we had some light given to us by Jesus Christ, concerning His relation to the Father. 4. Jesus Christ is and can alone be the Revealer of God to us—“And he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” (1) He can be known to whom the Son will reveal Him. (2) The way to the knowledge of God is by meekness, humility, submission, trustfulness, love. (W. Dorling.) (Ibid., p. 231; emphasis mine)

But perhaps the most illuminating passages in this reference remain yet to be adduced. These are those three remarkable utterances of our Lord which are recorded at 24³⁶, 11²⁷ and 28^18-20 The first of these we have already met with in Mark. It is that difficult saying in which our Lord declares that “concerning the day and hour” of His coming “no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet the Son, but the Father only”—which differs from the parallel in Mark significantly only in the added emphasis placed on the exclusion of all others whatsoever from this knowledge by the adjunction to the exception of the Father of the emphatic word “only.” The elevation of the Son here to superangelic dignity, as the climax of the enumeration of those excluded from the knowledge in question is reached in His name—no one at all, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet even the Son—is what it particularly concerns us to note, implying as it does the exaltation of the Son above the highest of creatures, “the angels of heaven.”³¹ The second of the utterances in question (11²⁷) is In some respects the most remarkable in the whole compass of the four Gospels. Even the Gospel of John contains nothing which penetrates more deeply into the essential relation of the Son to the Father. Indeed, as Dr. Sanday suggests, “we might describe the teaching of the Fourth Gospel” as only “a series of variations upon the one theme, which has its classical expression in” this “verse of the Synoptics”:³² “All things were delivered unto me by my Father; and no one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.” The point of the utterance, it will be seen, Is that In it our Lord asserts for Himself a relation of practical equality with the Father, here described in most elevated terms as the ” Lord of heaven and earth” (v. 25).³³ As the Father only can know the Son, so the Son only can know the Father: and others may know the Father only as He is revealed by the Son. That is, not merely is the Son the exclusive revealer of God, but the mutual knowledge of Father and Son is put on what seems very much a par. The Son can be known only by the Father in all that He is, as if His being were infinite and as such inscrutable to the finite intelligence; and His knowledge alone—again as if He were infinite In His attributes is competent to compass the depths of the Father’s infinite being. He who holds this relation to the Father cannot conceivably be a creature, and we ought not to be surprised, therefore, to find in the third of these great utterances (28^18-20) the Son made openly a sharer with the Father (and with the Holy Spirit) in the single Name of God: “All authority was given me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them Into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Having In the former passage (11²⁷) declared His intercommunion with the Father, who is the Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus here asserts that all authority in heaven and earth has been given Him, and asserts a place for Himself In the precincts of the Ineffable Name. Here is a claim not merely to a deity In some sense equivalent to and as it were alongside of the deity of the Father, but to a deity in some high sense one with the deity of the Father. (Benjamin Brickeridge Warfield, The Lord of Glory: A Study of the Designations of Our Lord in the New Testament with Especial Reference to His Deity [American Tract Society, NY 1907], “The Designations of our Lord in Matthew”, pp. 81-83; emphasis mine)

“All things were delivered unto me of my Father,” says Jesus, as reported in one of them (Mt 11²⁷): “and no one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Thus our Lord solemnly presents Himself to men as the exclusive source of all knowledge of God, and the exclusive channel of divine grace. No one can know the Father save through Him, and through Him alone can rest be found for weary souls. And this His exclusive mediation of saving knowledge He makes to rest upon His unique relation to the Father, by virtue of which the Father and Son, and all that is in the Father and Son, lie mutually open to each other’s gaze. Attention has been called to the fact, and it is important to observe it, that the whole passage is cast in the present tense, and the relation announced to exist between the Father and Son is, therefore, represented not as a past relation but as a continuous and unbroken one. What our Lord asserts is thus not that He once was with the Father and knew His mind, and is therefore fitted to mediate it as His representative on earth: it is that He, though on earth, still is with the Father and knows His mind yea, and will know it unchangeably forever. The relations of time do not enter into the representation. Our Lord presents Himself as the sole source of the knowledge of God and of the divine grace, because this is the relation in which He stands essentially to the Father,—a relation of complete and perfect intercommunion. The assertion of the reciprocal knowledge of the Father and Son, in other words, rises far above the merely mediatorial function of the Son, although it underlies His mediatorial mission: it carries us back into the region of metaphysical relations. The Son Is a fit and perfect mediator of the divine knowledge and grace because the Son and the Father are mutually Intercommunicative. The depths of the Son’s being, we are told, can be fathomed by none but a divine knowledge, while the knowledge of the Son compasses all that God Is; from both points of view, the Son appears thus as ” equal with God.”

But even this is far from the whole story. The perfect reciprocal knowledge of each by the other which is affirmed goes far towards suggesting that even equality with God falls short of fully expressing the relation in which the Son actually stands to the Father. Equality is an external relation: here there is indicated an internal relation which suggests rather the term interpenetration. There is a relation with the Father here suggested which transcends all creaturely possibilities, and in which there Is no place even for subordination. The man Jesus does indeed represent Himself as exercising a mediatorial function; what He does is to reveal the Father and to mediate His grace; and that because of a delivery over to Him by the Father. But this mediatorial function is rooted in a metaphysical relation in which is suggested no hint of subordination. Rather in this region what the Father is that the Son seems to be also. There is mystery here, no doubt, and nothing is done to relieve the mystery. All that is done is to enunciate in plain words the conception of the relation actually existing between the Father and Son which supplies their suitable account to all those passages in Matthew in which there seems to be suggested a confusion of Jesus with God, whether in function or in person. If this be the relation of Son and Father—if there is a certain mysterious interpenetration to be recognized between them—then it is no longer strange that to Jesus is attributed all the functions of God, including the forgiveness of sins and the universal judgment of men, nor that in Him is seen the coming of Jehovah to save His people, in His presence with men the fulfillment of the prophecy of ‘ Immanuel,’ God-with-us, in the coming of John the Baptist to prepare His way the fulfillment of the prophecy of the messenger to make the way of Jehovah straight, and the like. All things were delivered to Him, in short, because He is none else than God on earth. (Ibid., “Matthew’s Conception of our Lord”, pp. 92-94; emphasis mine)

“… But even while on earth He asserts for Himself an unbroken communion with God, or rather a continuous intercommunion of Himself as ‘Son’ with the ‘Father’ (Mt 11²⁷ Lk 10²²); knowing the Father as perfectly as He is known by the Father, and therefore able to make known the Father as His sole adequate revelation to men. In this great passage we have what must be considered the culminating assertion on our Lord’s part of His essential deity.” (Ibid., “The Jesus of the Synoptists the Primitive Jesus”, pp. 154-155; emphasis mine)

“… Here we discover how Jesus understands his relation to the Father–a relation that can only be understood as a claim of deity. It is presented in the most unique of ways and is unpacked in terms of two affirmations.

“First, the Father-Son relationship is spoken of in terms of an exclusive, mutual knowledge that each has of the other. Initially, it is not surprising that Jesus says, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father,’ for the Father is omniscient. But when he states, ‘No one knows the Father except the Son,’ this is a staggering claim. As Robert Reymond contends, this statement ‘lifts Jesus above the sphere of the ordinary mortal and places him in a position, not of equality merely, but of absolute reciprocity and interpenetration of knowledge of the Father.’

“Furthermore, the only way one can make sense of this reciprocal/mutual knowledge of the Son is in categories that are antecedent to Jesus becoming Messiah. Why? Because it is nigh impossible to think of Jesus’ knowledge as merely a consequence of his messianic mission; it has to be tied to pre-temporal, even eternal relations. That is why ‘sonship’ cannot merely be reduced to functional categories. Rather, as George Ladd has argued, ‘sonship precedes messiahship and is in fact the ground for the messianic mission.’ Second, the Father-Son relation is further developed in terms of a mutual sovereignty whereby both the Father and the Son must take the initiative to reveal each other in order for anyone to come to a saving knowledge.

“When these two affirmations are united, it is fair to say that no higher expression of parity between the Father and the Son can be given. Jesus’ self-identity as the Son has to be understood in divine terms. B. B. Warfield, many years ago, said it correctly:

Not merely is the Son the exclusive revealer of God, but the mutual knowledge of the Father and Son is put on what seems very much a par. The Son can be known only by the Father in all that He is, as if His being were infinite and as such inscrutable to the finite intelligence; and His knowledge alone – again as if He were infinite in His attributes–is competent to compass the depths of the Father’s infinite being. He who holds this relation to the Father cannot conceivably be a creature.” (Stephen J. Wellum, The Deity of Christ, edited by Christopher W. Morgan & Robert A. Peterson [Crossway, Wheaton, IL 2011], 3. The Deity of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels, pp. 82-83; emphasis mine)

22. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, Jesus goes on (cf. John 3:35; 13:3). He has the supreme place, lacking nothing. But this is not at all obvious. No-one knows who the Son is except the Father. There are depths in the being of our Lord that his followers cannot plumb. Jesus calls himself the Son in the Synoptic Gospels only here (together with the Matthean parallel) and in Mark 13:32, though the expression is common in John. It goes with this that no-one knows who the Father is except the Son. There is an important addition, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. These sayings ‘assert a unique relation of Jesus to the Father, precisely as “the Son”’ (Fitzmyer). It is through Jesus and only through Jesus that people come to know the Father as he is. ‘The God and Father of the Lord Jesus’ (2 Cor. 11:31) is an expression with a very full meaning. God is as Jesus revealed him. (Leon Morris, Luke: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988], Volume 3, p. 205; emphasis mine)

10:22 All things. This includes not only “these things” of Luke 10:21 but also Jesus’ authority and power and his authority to judge the world.

Have been committed to me by my Father. The Father, as “Lord of heaven and earth” (10:21), has placed all things under Jesus’ command.

No one knows who the Son is except the Father. The only other place in the Synoptic Gospels where the term “Son” is used in this absolute sense is Mark 13:32. Jesus’ sonship is qualitatively different from ours, not just quantitatively. This is made clear by Luke’s use of “no one.” Jesus’ status is unique. The Father’s knowledge of the Son should not be interpreted as referring to a divine election of him (cf. Amos 3:2; Jer 1:5) because the Son “knows” the Father in the same way.

And no one knows who the Father is except the Son. This forms a chiasmus with the preceding verse: Son-Father-Father-Son.

And those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. The only way to a saving knowledge of God is through Jesus. Compare Acts 4:12; John 14:6. (Robert H. Stein, Luke, The New American Commentary [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992], Volume 24, pp. 312–313; emphasis mine)

V. 22 is characterized by A. M. Hunter as “perhaps the most important verse in the Synoptic Gospels,” which provides a clearer aperture into the self-consciousness of Jesus than any dominical saying in the Synoptics, including, perhaps, the Fourth Gospel. Vv. 21–22 closely parallel Matt 11:25–27, apparently deriving from a source common to Matt as well, i.e., the Double Tradition. The noninterchangeable relationship between Father and Son in v. 22 and the style in which the relationship is expressed, like the reciprocal relationship and style of v. 16, remind readers immediately of the Fourth Gospel; indeed, Plummer rhapsodizes that v. 22 “contains the whole of the Christology of the Fourth Gospel.” No text from the OT, and no text from the intertestamental period or rabbinic literature, either states or intimates an exclusive and unshared relationship with the Father that Jesus claims for himself in v. 22. Paul Billerbeck’s massive five-volume commentary on the NT from Talmud and Midrash finds no parallel to 10:22 in the entire Jewish tradition. David Flusser, a Jewish scholar who devoted his life to the study of Jesus against the background especially of Second Temple Judaism, finds the closest analogy to Jesus’ self-consciousness in Hillel, although even that analogy is inadequate. Nineteenth-century liberalism fiercely resisted the exclusive claim of divine sonship in v. 22, for in summarizing the essence of the Christian faith as “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,” it concluded that Jesus’ relationship with the Father was in essence no different from the relationship that all humanity naturally share with God. The claim of Jesus in v. 22 both to universality (“all things have been committed to me”) and exclusivity (“no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”) could be made of no character in the OT, and to my knowledge has been made by no founder of any other religion.

Jesus’ reference to “my Father” further echoes his unshared divine sonship. There are fifty-one occurrences (excluding parallels) of “Father” in the mouth of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, in twenty-nine of which Jesus speaks of God (as here) as “my Father,” and in twenty-two of which he teaches the disciples about God as “your Father.” In no instance, however, does Jesus include himself with the disciples in addressing God as “our Father.” In v. 22 Jesus claims to stand in a unique and unshared relationship with the Father, as a consequence of which the Father has delivered “all things” to the Son, and given the Son exclusive authority to reveal knowledge of himself and the Father to whomever he wills. (James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Luke, ed. D. A. Carson, The Pillar New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2015], 314–317; emphasis mine)

Scriptural references taken from the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB).