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1 John 2:23 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
²³Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father. That is, he has no just views of the Father, and has no evidence of his friendship. It is only by the Son of God that the Father is made known to men (Matt. 11:27; Heb. 1:2, 3,) and only through him can we become reconciled to God and obtain evidence of his favor. John 5:23 says, “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”

The one who confesses the Son has the Father also. As it was true that if one denied the Son of God he could have no pretensions to any proper acquaintance with the Father, so it seemed to follow that if anyone had any proper knowledge of the Son of God, and made a suitable confession of him, he had evidence that he was acquainted with the Father. Compare John 17:3; Rom. 10:9. The great truth can never be too clearly stated, or too often inculcated, that it is only by a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that we can have any true acquaintance with God, and that all who have just views of the Savior are in fact acquainted with the true God and are heirs of eternal life.

Daniel L. Akin writes,

This emphatic statement about how one has a relationship with the Father develops what John said in the previous verse and shows the dire consequences of believing this Christological heresy. John begins by explaining the effects in negative terms and then moves to positive ones, preparing the way for the exhortation that is to follow. John’s claim that anyone who denies the Son does not have or possess the Father asserts unequivocally that a person who denies the Son has no child-parent relationship with God. Calvin puts it well, “The Father cannot be separated from the Son.”²⁹⁴ There is an exclusivity that cannot be denied. One enters into a relationship with the Father through a relationship with Jesus Christ. This unique saying as a whole is likely taken from the common Christian tradition that is reflected in the Synoptics (cf. Matt 10:32–33 and par.) and can also be found in John’s Gospel (9:22; 12:42). The use of echei (“has”) with a divine object, however, does not have this parallel, but it is used again in the epistles (1 John 5:12; 2 John 9). There are some approximations of this construction that occur in the Old Testament, but there is no word in Hebrew that matches the meaning exactly (Lev 26:12; Exod 20:3; Num 18:20; Deut 12:12). We have what appears to be “a Johannine adaptation of the covenant motif” in which the believer has God as Father through Jesus Christ. In addition, the construction comes from language that is used to describe the action of God in the New Covenant, whereby the people of God know him.

The positive side of the argument is that the ones who confess the Son possess the Father, balancing perfectly the first part of the verse. The conscious and open confession that Jesus is Son of God who is both divine and human automatically results in a relationship with the Father. This mirrors the reciprocal relationship between the Son and the Father that was affirmed in v. 22. We are faced with either confessing or denying Jesus Christ. There is no middle ground. As Smalley notes, “The possibility of honest agnosticism about the person and work of Jesus does not seem to have occurred to John!”

The foundation is established through a proper understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ, as elucidated in vv. 22–23. John now returns to a discussion of abiding in the Son and the Father to exhort the believers to continue to live in a manner befitting one who has called Jesus Lord.^[1]

^[1] Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 122–123.