I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Matthew 23-24.

    In this passage Jesus says something which I am disheartened to see being overlooked more and more in the Church today. He warns us against giving honorifics to people based on their spiritual standing. He tells us not to let anyone call us Rabbi or Teacher because we should all be turning to God to be taught and that we should call no one father because we have one Father, which is God. Yet time and again, I hear people referring to someone as “Pastor Bob” (or whatever the person’s name is). People tell me it is not the same because they are not using “Rabbi”, or “Teacher”, or “Father”. This instruction from Jesus comes in the midst of Him warning against people who teach us how to find loopholes by using the letter of the law against the spirit of the law. The whole point of what Jesus was teaching here is that we should not place some people as elevated relative to God from the rest of us. We are all equal before God. We should not attempt to put someone between ourselves and God and we should not allow others to view us as being between them and God. When we give such honorifics to people, we tempt them to think of themselves more highly than they ought. When we allow others to apply such honorifics to us, we begin the path to being hypocrites, we begin to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.