Verse 1
1. Behold As if a new vision of the glory of our sonship, present and future, beamed on the apostle’s sight.
Manner Style or nature. Not only is that love wonderful in amount, but it is most extraordinary in quality, working a strangely glorious transformation in and of us.
Of love He beholds that sonship in the full glory of its source, the divine love.
Called In the dialect of God, of heaven, and, therefore, of truth.
Sons Literally, children. We were once generated as children of nature; we are re generated as children of God. But this regeneration is as yet in commencement; is secret within us until its revelation in the resurrection, when the transformation will be complete and all-glorious. And our being divinely so- called is an acknowledgment of our sonship by the Father, who thereby adopts us as his and gives us the spirit of adoption, crying, Abba! Father! To this, the best reading, add, and we are. That is, not only are we so called, but we truly are the children of God. Therefore corresponds to because, indicating that the latter clause, knew him not, gives the reason for knoweth us not.
Knoweth us not The Christian looks like anybody else; no gleam of divine glory gives token of his divine nobility to the eye of the world.
Knew him not Even the Nicolaitan Gnostic, who so calls himself that is, a knower, because he “knows God” knew him not, and so recognises not us as his children.
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