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Japanese He is our brother. The New Testament calls Jesus the brother of believers and never their Father. He taught his disciples to pray to God as “Our Father,” and after the resurrection he called them “my brothers” (John 20:17). The title “Everlasting Father” comes from Isaiah 9:6, which most churches do not read as making him the Father.
In Gethsemane Jesus prayed, “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36). Paul says the Spirit puts that same cry in our mouths: we have received “the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15). The Son shares his own word for God with us. That is what makes him our brother: the Father he prays to becomes ours.
Is Jesus our Father?
In the Gospels Jesus prays to the Father (“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you,” Mark 14:36), calls him “my Father,” and taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). He told them to ask the Father in his name: “whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (John 16:23). Paul makes the same distinction: “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6).
Jesus also kept his own sonship apart from that of his disciples. After the resurrection he sent Mary Magdalene with the message, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that he “distinguished his sonship from that of his disciples by never saying ‘our Father’, except to command them” to pray it, and that he “emphasized this distinction, saying ‘my Father and your Father’” (Catechism 443). Augustine explained the wording: “He says not, Our Father: in one sense, therefore, is He mine, in another sense, yours; by nature mine, by grace yours” (Tractates on the Gospel of John 121.3).
Jesus did at times address his disciples as children. At the Last Supper he called them “little children” (John 13:33), and after the resurrection he called out to them from the shore, “Children, do you have any fish?” (John 21:5). Hebrews applies to him the words of Isaiah, “Behold, I and the children God has given me” (Hebrews 2:13, quoting Isaiah 8:18), just after quoting him as calling believers “my brothers.” John Chrysostom commented on the verse: “For as here He shows Himself a Father, so before, a Brother” (Homilies on Hebrews 4). None of these passages gives Jesus the title Father, and he told his disciples, “call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9).
What does “Everlasting Father” mean in Isaiah 9:6?
The verse usually cited for calling Jesus Father is the prophecy of the child in Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” In Hebrew Bibles it is Isaiah 9:5, and “Everlasting Father” translates avi-ad, literally “father of eternity” or “father forever.”
Early translations show how the verse was read. The Greek Septuagint, the Bible of the early church, gives a shorter name: “his name is called the Messenger of great counsel” (in Brenton’s translation), though one of its manuscripts, the Codex Alexandrinus, adds a longer list ending “Father of the age to come.” Eastern Orthodox hymns still call Christ the “Angel of Great Counsel.” The Latin Vulgate reads Pater futuri saeculi, which the Douay-Rheims Bible translates “the Father of the world to come.”
Jewish readers take the verse differently. The Jewish Publication Society’s 1917 translation leaves the name untranslated, “Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom,” and its 1985 translation renders it as a sentence: “The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler.” The medieval commentator Rashi read the first titles as describing God, who gave the name, and “prince of peace” as the name given to King Hezekiah.
Churches that confess the Trinity read the verse as a prophecy of Christ, but not as saying that the Son is the Father, since they hold that the Father and the Son are distinct persons. John Calvin explained the title this way: “The name Father is put for Author, because Christ preserves the existence of his Church through all ages, and bestows immortality on the body and on the individual members.” The prophet, he wrote, was describing not “Christ’s mysterious essence” but “what Christ will show himself to be towards believers” (Commentary on Isaiah 9:6).
Are God the Father and Jesus the same person?
Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches answer no: the Father and the Son are one God but two distinct persons. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), and in the same conversation he spoke of the Father as another: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10). At his baptism, as Jesus came up from the water, the Spirit descended on him and a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17). The Council of Nicaea in 325 confessed the Son to be “begotten, not made, being of one substance” with the Father. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that when Christians pray to “our” Father, they address “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “are not confusing the persons” of the Trinity (Catechism 2789).
Oneness Pentecostals, such as the United Pentecostal Church International, reject the Trinity and answer yes. The church’s statement of beliefs says, “There is one God, who has revealed Himself as Father; through His Son, in redemption; and as the Holy Spirit, by emanation. Jesus Christ is God manifested in flesh.” A 2004 position paper adds that all the names and titles of God, including Father, “refer to one and the same being,” and that “Jesus is not the incarnation of one person of a trinity but the incarnation of all the identity, character, and personality of the one God.” It cites Isaiah 9:6 and John 14:9 among its texts. For Oneness believers, Jesus is rightly called Father.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the Father and the Son are separate beings. A 1916 doctrinal exposition by its First Presidency and Twelve Apostles, “The Father and the Son,” also explains senses in which Jesus is called Father: as Creator, since “He is very properly called the Eternal Father of heaven and earth”; as the Father of those who abide in his gospel; and by “divine investiture of authority,” speaking for the Father. The same document says, “There is no impropriety, therefore, in speaking of Jesus Christ as the Elder Brother of the rest of humankind.”
If God is our Father, is Jesus our brother?
Yes. The New Testament describes believers as God’s adopted children: “you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15; see also Galatians 4:4–7). Adopted children of the Father are brothers and sisters of his Son, and the New Testament says so directly: Jesus “is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Hebrews 2:11) and is “the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).
Who are Jesus’ parents?
Jesus’ mother is Mary. Joseph, her husband, raised him, and people took Jesus to be “the son (as was supposed) of Joseph” (Luke 3:23). The Gospels teach that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit without a human father (Matthew 1:18–25; Luke 1:34–35), and Christians confess God the Father as his Father. He knew it as a boy. When Mary and Joseph found him in the temple at twelve, Mary said, “your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” Jesus answered, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48–49). After the resurrection he shared that Father with us in one sentence: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).
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