Jesus reveals the Father to anyone he chooses. Luke 10:22

Luke 10:22 says, "All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

The Reformation Study Bible notes (2015) say the following about the verse:

Only the Son can make the Father known, in accordance with His sovereign choice.

What I want to dispel in this article is the notion that Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to some but he refuses to reveal the Father to others.

Context straightens out the meaning of this Bible verse. Luke makes a point of telling the reader that Jesus had a large following. Not only did the Apostles leave all to follow Jesus; but there was a crowd of people who had left all to follow Jesus. Many of these people were, according to the scribes and Pharisees, unsuitable candidates for good disciples (Luke 5:29-30; 7:34; 15:1). Luke alone of the four Gospels reports for us the mission of the seventy. These seventy missionaries were given authority to cure the sick (Luke 10:9) and we learn later that they were able to subject demons in Jesus' name. They were given protection from demonic forces of evil (Luke 10:17-20). This is the context in which we find Luke 10:21-22.

21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

The reference to children in verse 21 applies to the seventy missionaries. They are children in the sense of not measuring up to standards applicable to a good and righteous Jew.  They were the sort of folks that gave Jesus a bad name among the scribes and Pharisees. They were commoners. Jesus said these low-life sorts had more insight into godliness than did the clergy (Luke 9:48; 18:15-17). Clergy, by comparison, tend towards pride in their theological knowledge and they are not open to learning from "children" in the faith (James 3:1, 14-18). This feature of the righteousness of the children is evidenced in their role in the dethroning of Satan (see also Luke 7:21).

Verse 22 flows topically quite nicely. Jesus did not agree with the scribes and Pharisees that he should minister to more suitable disciples. He chose to minister to people whom the Jewish leadership called "tax collectors and sinners" but whom Jesus called "infants" (see also in Luke 10:38-42 that Jesus gave personal undivided teaching attention to a woman). Jesus was told they were not worth it but Jesus ministered to them and they had a role in the overthrow of Satan.

The point of verse 22 is not that Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to some individuals and not to others. The point is that Jesus chose to reveal the Father to a certain sort of people, a kind of people that the scribes and Pharisees deemed to be religiously inferior. These disciples were working out to be very effective workers in the kingdom while the Pharisees stood by and criticized.