Was Jesus condemning the use of all terms of address for religious leaders when He told His disciples not to call anyone Rabbi, Father, or Instructor?

Several possible interpretations are absurd on the face of it. Jesus could not have been condemning the use of the specific terms, but leaving room for all others. As if: “Right Reverend Most Holy Doctor” is fine, but “Rabbi” is not.

Nor could He be condemning all official titles. Paul insists on his right to be considered an “apostle,” and calls himself such in many of his epistles.

Besides, the New Testament says that some men in the church are teachers and pastors, and Paul more than once describes himself as a father to the congregations. Perhaps Jesus was saying that it is appropriate to call someone a “teacher” or “father” in third-person indirect discourse, but not to his face. We can talk about “Pastor Smith” but we have to call him “Charlie.” If this is what Jesus meant, He is being uncharacteristically nit-picking, and this would be an especially odd stance for Him to adopt in a chapter condemning the Pharisees for focusing on minutiae rather than the weighty things of the law. If Jesus is simply making a distinction between direct address and indirect description, He is proving Himself ever bit as much a tither of dill and cumin as any Pharisee. Whatever Jesus is saying, it’s something big, something about justice and mercy and faithfulness.

Two things help us get what Jesus is saying. First, the satiric tone of the passage has to be taken into account. This is a chapter of enlarged phylacteries (which is not a disease of middle-aged men), lengthened tassels, competition for places and titles of honor. In such a passage, hyperbole feels quite at home, quite welcome.

Second, Jesus gives a double theological rationale for His assault on honorific titles. On the one hand, no one is “my great one” (rabbi) because all are united in equality as brothers; no one is father because there is a single heavenly Father. On the other hand, greatness, honor, and exaltation in the church comes through service not through multiplying titles.

Put these together, and we get this: There is one Teacher, and the ones who teach in the church are only servants of this one Teacher. There is one Father, and the ones who (like Paul, comparing himself to Moses) are nursing fathers are no more than humble servants of the one Father. There is one Leader, and those who lead in the church are above all disciples of that leader, Christ.

That is, the great ones are not the ones with the impressive titles but the ones who humble themselves. The great are not the ones who sit in the seat of Moses but those who serve the one greater than Moses who sits at the right hand of the Father.