The two thoughts of the present and the future condition of God's children are placed side by side with the simple copula, and, as parts of one thought. Christian condition, now and eternally, centers in the fact of being children of God. In that fact lies the germ of all the possibilities of eternal life.
It doth not yet appear (οὔπω ἐφανερώθη)
Rev., more correctly, it is not yet made manifest. See on Joh 21:1. The force of the aorist tense is, was never manifested on any occasion.
What we shall be (τί ἐσόμεθα)
“This what suggests something unspeakable, contained in the likeness of God” (Bengel).
But we know
Omit but.
When He shall appear (ἐὰν φανερωθῇ)
Rev., correctly, if He (or it) shall be manifested. We may render either “if it shall be manifested,” that is what we shall be; or, “if He,” etc. The preceding ἐφανερώθη it is (not yet) made manifest, must, I think, decide us in favor of the rendering it. We are now children of God. It has not been revealed what we shall be, and therefore we do not know. In the absence of such revelation, we know (through our consciousness of childship, through His promise that we shall behold His glory), that if what we shall be were manifested, the essential fact of the glorified condition thus revealed will be likeness to the Lord. This fact we know now as a promise, as a general truth of our future state. The condition of realizing the fact is the manifestation of that glorified state, the revealing of the τί ἐσόμεθα what we shall be; for that manifestation will bring with it the open vision of the Lord. When the what we shall be shall be manifest, it will bring us face to face with Him, and we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.