⁹ And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.^(A)

3 ¹ See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

⁹ Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

Corruption of the Priesthood

⁶ A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is the honor due me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, “How have we despised your name?”^(A)

¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.^{(A) 15} For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba!^[a] Father!”^{(B) 16} it is that very Spirit bearing witness^[b] with our spirit that we are children of God,^{(C) 17} and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.^(D)

¹¹ If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Duties toward Believers

5 Do not speak harshly to an older man,^[a] but speak to him as to a father, to younger men as brothers,^{(A) 2} to older women as mothers, to younger women as sisters—with absolute purity.

¹⁵ For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I fathered you through the gospel.^(A)

⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

⁹ “Pray, then, in this way: