Mid-century illustration of a calm sea at dawn

Matthew 23:9 · World English Bible

Matthew 23:9 Meaning Call No Man on the Earth

Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven.

What does Matthew 23:9 mean?

To give the name of father to anything on earth is to seek one's origin in the world, to believe the self was made by what is outside it and owes its being to a source that can change or fail. The ego welcomes this, for it wants the mind to feel authored by circumstance and therefore small and afraid.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Matthew 23:9 through 3 lenses

The same verse, read by 3 traditions.

Christian Psychology
Manifestation
Esoteric

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Yet nothing in the world of appearances created the self, and to look for a parent there is to forget where life truly comes from. Turned toward its one changeless Father, the mind knows it was not made by the world and cannot be threatened by it, held in a love that nothing outside could give or take away.

Father upon the earth: the worldly source the mind mistakes for its origin, the belief that the self was authored by what is outside it Father which is in heaven: the one changeless source of the self's being, the love no earthly figure can replace or withdraw

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MANIFESTATION

Manifestation

To call no man on earth your father is to stop crediting any outer thing as the cause of your life. No person, no circumstance, no inherited condition fathered what you are living. The one Father in heaven is your own imagination, the single source within, and it alone brings forth every event you meet. This ends the search for someone else to blame or thank.

Another person is only your opinion of him pushed outward, so even he is not a second cause standing apart from you. The Father is the symbol of authority and power found within the self, and there is no other. A man is God the Father dreaming himself as the whole world he sees. Nothing outside him is making his life. He is.

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ESOTERIC

Esoteric

The source of a life is not any figure standing outside it, no priest, no elder, no man of the lower ground who claims to have made you. Earth is the flesh and the crowded outer world of names and offices, and no authority there is the true origin.

The one Father in heaven is the higher mind seated at the top of the body, the crown above the neck where the current begins. What a person really comes from sits within the skull, not in any man walking the ground below.

Earth: the flesh and the outer world of borrowed titles and inherited authority Heaven: the higher region of the head, the crown where the true source of a life is seated

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Matthew 23:9 today

Catch the sentence you tell yourself about why you turned out this way, your family, your city, your old job. It explains a lot about your habits and nothing about your worth.
Spend time with a parent or relative today without asking them to be more than they are. Letting them off the hook of authoring you is a kindness to both of you.
When a review, a number or someone's opinion seems to decide what you are worth, feel it and then look past it. The thing that handed you your life is not the thing on the screen.

What have you let define you that was never actually where you came from?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 25

The way was there before earth and sky, nameless and unchanging, and everything comes from it. Look to that for your origin, not to the things that come and go.