Matthew 23:8–12

Matthew 23:8 — "Do not be called Rabbi" The word Rabbi (רַבִּי) means literally "my great one" and was a title of learned authority applied to teachers of the Torah. Jesus does not forbid the existence of teachers — He Himself teaches in this very Gospel, and Paul will enumerate teachers among the gifts to the Church (Eph 4:11). The prohibition targets the appropriation of ultimate authority, the treating of any human teacher as if his word were self-sufficient and final. The qualifier is precise: "for one is your teacher, the Christ." Matthew's Gospel uses ho didaskalos (the teacher) for Jesus with striking consistency (cf. 8:19; 10:24–25), establishing that all genuine Christian teaching is a participation in, and subordination to, His. The phrase "all of you are brothers" (πάντες δὲ ὑμεῖς ἀδελφοί ἐστε) is ecclesially charged: the disciples form a community of equals before the one Teacher, a horizontal brotherhood grounded in a vertical Sonship. This directly anticipates the early Christian practice of calling fellow believers "brothers and sisters" (cf. Acts 1:15; Rom 1:13).

Matthew 23:9 — "Call no man on earth your father" This is the most contested verse in the cluster, particularly in Catholic-Protestant dialogue, because Catholics do call priests and the Pope "Father." The key is the adverb and the contrast: "on earth" vs. "he who is in heaven." Jesus is not eliminating the word father from human vocabulary — He Himself speaks of "your father Abraham" (John 8:56) and affirms the commandment to honour one's father (Mt 15:4). The prohibition is against usurping the absolute, originating Fatherhood of God. Paul himself writes, "I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Cor 4:15) and calls Timothy his "true child in the faith" (1 Tim 1:2) — clearly using paternal language relationally without contradicting Christ's words. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on this verse in his Homilies on Matthew (Homily 72), explains: "He does not forbid us to call men fathers, but to prefer the honour of earthly fathers to the honour of the heavenly Father." Every earthly fatherhood — biological, priestly, or spiritual — is derivative and participatory. As the Catechism teaches (CCC 2367), human fatherhood "reflects" the divine Fatherhood; it does not replace it.

Matthew 23:10 — "Neither be called masters (kathēgētai)" The Greek kathēgētēs (καθηγητής) is distinct from didaskalos; it carries the nuance of "guide," "leader," or "director" — one who goes ahead and shows the way. Again, the issue is not the existence of guides and leaders but the arrogation of self-sufficient authority to lead. "One is your master, the Christ" repeats the Christological anchor of verse 8 with this second title, creating a triadic structure: one Teacher, one Father, one Master — all pointing to the Trinity and to Christ as the mediator of divine authority.

Matthew 23:11 — "The greatest among you will be your servant" The word diakonos (διάκονος) — servant, deacon — here defines greatness. This is not merely a moral exhortation but an ontological redefinition of what "great" means in the Kingdom. It echoes the dispute among the Twelve in Matthew 20:26–27 and Mark 9:35, and reaches its fullest expression in the foot-washing of John 13. Notice the future tense: "will be" (ἔσται) — Jesus is describing how things are in the Kingdom, not merely how they should be.

Matthew 23:12 — The Kenotic Inversion This logion appears in multiple forms across the Gospels (Lk 14:11; 18:14), suggesting it was a frequently repeated teaching of Jesus. The passive verbs ("will be humbled," "will be exalted") are divine passives — it is God who humbles the proud and raises the lowly. This echoes the Magnificat (Lk 1:52) and Hannah's song (1 Sam 2:7–8), placing Jesus' teaching squarely within the prophetic tradition of Israel. The pattern is ultimately Christological: the one who most perfectly "humbled himself" (Phil 2:8) is the one whom God "highly exalted" (Phil 2:9).

Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage precisely because it has been most challenged on verse 9. Rather than reading these verses as a flat prohibition on titles, the Catholic interpretive tradition — from Chrysostom through Aquinas to the Second Vatican Council — reads them as a theology of participated authority: all legitimate authority within the Church is real, but derivative and transparent to its divine source.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2214) affirms that the fatherhood of God is "the source of human fatherhood," and Lumen Gentium (§28) explicitly frames the ministerial priesthood as a participation in Christ's own priesthood — not a competing authority, but a sacramental instrument of the one Teacher and Shepherd.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 103, a. 3) distinguishes between honor given to persons in themselves and honor given to them in relation to God: the latter is not only permissible but obligatory, since to honor the image is to honor the one imaged. This is the theological underpinning for calling priests "Father" — not as an autonomous source of spiritual life, but as one who, through the sacrament of Holy Orders, participates in the one divine Fatherhood.

Verse 11's identification of greatness with service is the scriptural foundation for the Pope's ancient title Servus Servorum Dei ("Servant of the Servants of God"), first formally adopted by St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century and used by every pope since. This title is not a rhetorical flourish but a theological claim: hierarchical authority in the Church is authenticated precisely by its character as service, not dominion. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium (§27) describes bishops not as "vicars of Christ" over their people in a dominating sense but as servants of the people entrusted to them.

Finally, verse 12's kenotic inversion is grounded in the very pattern of Christ's Incarnation (Phil 2:5–11), making humility not a mere virtue but a participation in the divine logic of self-giving love — what Hans Urs von Balthasar called the Trinitarian kenosis lived out in Christian discipleship.

This passage confronts contemporary Catholics with two very different temptations. The first is clericalism — the tendency, whether in clergy or laity, to treat ordination as a badge of personal status rather than a call to radical service. Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (§102) names clericalism as one of the gravest obstacles to the Church's mission, and Matthew 23:8–12 is its direct antidote. Any priest, bishop, or lay minister who uses authority to be served rather than to serve has inverted the order Christ establishes here.

The second, less obvious temptation is the mirror image: dismissing all authority and hierarchy as incompatible with Christian brotherhood. Verse 9 is sometimes weaponized to flatten all distinctions of role in the Church. But Jesus is not abolishing teachers, fathers, and guides — He is baptizing them, relativizing every human authority to the divine.

For the ordinary Catholic, the most direct application is verse 12: in family life, parish life, and professional life, the instinct to assert status, demand recognition, or climb hierarchies is constantly at war with the Kingdom logic of descent. The practical question is concrete: in what area of my life am I seeking to be exalted, and what would it look like to choose the lower seat?