Is the One Who Led You to Christ Your “Spiritual Parent”?

This question is based on Paul’s statement to the Corinthian believers here:

14I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. 15Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

1 Corinthians 4:14-17

Paul started the assembly in Corinth and stayed there 1.5 years to set a foundation before leaving and starting churches in other areas (Acts 18:11). It was 2-3 years later when he wrote this epistle (letter) to the believers at Corinth. Strife & division were threatening the young fellowship as it was marked by arrogance, sexual misconduct, lawsuits, abuse of spiritual gifts and misunderstanding of basic Christian teachings. So Paul was seeking to restore balance and spirituality to the carnal fellowship (1 Corinthians 4:4).

Verse 14 shows that Paul was writing the believers to warn them “as my dear children.” Since they were saved through his ministry and he set a spiritual foundation for them over the course of 18 months living there, Paul naturally viewed them as his spiritual children. In other words, he had fatherly feelings toward them because he was their foremost mentor even if they had “ten thousand” other instructors in Corinth. A few years had passed and so Paul was refreshing their memory to bolster a positive reception to his letter, which contained necessary corrective instructions. He exhorted them to “imitate” his lifestyle and service while also informing them that he was sending his protégé Timothy to the city to help straighten things out at the troubled assembly (verses 16-17).

This brings us to the question of this article: For someone to be your spiritual father or mother, do they have to be the person who led you to the Lord via the gospel of Christ? Is everyone else who instructs you in Christ just one of myriad instructors and of lesser importance with lesser authority? It depends. For instance, Paul didn’t just share the message of Christ with these people of Corinth, he also fed them the foundational truths of Christianity for a whole year and a half (Matthew 4:4 & Hebrews 6:1-2), plus maintained a long-distance relationship with them. So to qualify as someone’s spiritual father or mother, you’d have to do more than just lead them in voicing the proverbial sinner’s prayer. You’d have to walk closely with them for 1.5 years or so, teaching them the basic New Covenant truths of the Bible, as well as oversee them in the ensuing years from long-distance.

Regarding the hyperbolic “ten thousand guardians in Christ” that the Corinthians had since Paul (physically) left that fellowship, we know from history that Paul was the greatest vessel used of God in the New Testament era, after Jesus Christ of course. So none of the many other teachers in Corinth, as good as some of them may have been, were even close to Paul’s level, spiritually speaking.

The idea that the person who leads you to Christ is your spiritual parent raises additional questions, not to mention some absurdities.

For instance, what about believers like me who can’t cite a human spiritual father/mother because I was saved at the age of 20 by the Holy Spirit while working alone at a fitness center after midnight? I only knew the gist of what to pray because I had collected many Christian tracts, perhaps two dozen, which I had read & reread over the years in my teens. I suppose I could research who wrote those particular tracts. Would these people be my spiritual fathers & mothers since they all had a hand in leading me to Christ by sowing the gospel in my life? Wouldn’t it be absurd to track each one down—assuming they’re still alive on Earth—and wholly submit my spiritual life to them without even knowing if they’re worthy of such submission? Which brings up…

What if the person who leads you to Christ is effective at evangelism, but is not very spiritually mature or is lacking in biblical knowledge? This person might be your spiritual parent in regards to leading you to the LORD, but they’re certainly not the one who helped you grow in knowledge, understanding and wisdom; in other words, they didn’t help you mature spiritually.

David said he had more insight than all his teachers because of his diligence in humbly seeking the LORD and God’s Word (Psalm 119:99–100). This shows that, just because someone is your spiritual father/mother—whether they led you to Christ or helped your growth (or both)—it doesn’t mean that you’re limited to their limitations. Nor does it mean you can’t correct them based on the rightly-divided Word of Truth in cases where they may be in error, although there’s a way to correct such a person and a way not to, as explained here.

In my life, there were two instrumental mentors in my early years as a young believer, but I could list about ten others who have been strategic in my spiritual growth during the first 27 years of my walk with the Lord. I suppose each of these could be considered a spiritual parent to some degree with two or three more so than the others.

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