Matthew 23:9

Believers should call no one on earth 'Father' in the ultimate spiritual sense, for God alone is the Father in heaven. It guards God's unique place as the source of life and authority.

Cross-references · 15

• 1 Jn 3:1See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.
• Heb 12:9Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?
• Mal 1:6“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’
• Job 32:21–22Please don’t let me respect any man’s person, neither will I give flattering titles to any man.
• Rom 8:14–17For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God.
• Matt 7:11If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
• Matt 6:8–9Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father knows what things you need, before you ask him.
• 1 Tim 5:1–2Don’t rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father; the younger men as brothers;
• 1 Cor 4:15For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News.
• 2 Cor 6:18I will be to you a Father. You will be to me sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.”
• 2 Kgs 2:12Elisha saw it, and he cried, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” He saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes, and tore them in two pieces.
• Acts 22:1“Brothers and fathers, listen to the defense which I now make to you.”
• 2 Kgs 6:21The king of Israel said to Elisha, when he saw them, “My father, shall I strike them? Shall I strike them?”
• Matt 6:32For the Gentiles seek after all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
• 2 Kgs 13:14Now Elisha became sick with the illness of which he died; and Joash the king of Israel came down to him, and wept over him, and said, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!”

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