John Calvin Commentary John 8:19

"They said therefore unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye know neither me, nor my Father: if ye knew me, ye would know my Father also." — John 8:19 (ASV)

Where is thy father? There can be no doubt whatever that it was in mockery that they inquired about his Father. For not only do they, with their customary pride, treat contemptuously what he had said about the Father, but they likewise ridicule him for talking loftily about his Father, as if he had derived his origin from heaven. By these words, therefore, they mean that they do not value Christ’s Father so highly as to ascribe anything to the Son on his account. And the reason why there are so many today who, with daring presumption, despise Christ is that few consider that God has sent him.

You neither know me nor my Father. He does not deign to give them a direct reply, but in a few words reproaches them with the ignorance in which they flattered themselves. They inquired about the Father; and yet when they had the Son before their eyes, seeing, they did not see (Matthew 13:13). It was therefore a just punishment of their pride and wicked ingratitude that those who despised the Son of God, who had been openly offered to them, never approached the Father. For how shall any mortal man ascend to the height of God, unless he is raised on high by the hand of his Son? God in Christ condescended to the humble condition of men, so as to stretch out his hand; and do not those who reject God, when he thus approaches them, deserve to be excluded from heaven?

Let us then understand that the same thing is said to us all; for whoever aspires to know God, and does not begin with Christ, must wander—as it were—in a labyrinth. For it is for good reason that Christ is called the image of the Father, as has already been said. Again, as all who, leaving Christ, attempt to rise to heaven, after the manner of the giants, are destitute of all right knowledge of God, so every man who directs his mind and all his senses to Christ will be led straight to the Father. For on good grounds God declares that,

by the mirror of the Gospel, we clearly behold God in the person of Christ,
(2 Corinthians 3:18).

And certainly it is an astonishing reward of the obedience of faith that whoever humbles himself before the Lord Jesus penetrates above all the heavens, even to those mysteries which the angels behold and adore.