John 20:17 Explained: My Father and Your Father
Short answer: In John 20:17 the risen Jesus tells Mary Magdalene to stop clinging to him and to go to his brothers with a message: he is ascending to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God. The double wording matters. Jesus does not say our Father in a way that flattens who he is; he distinguishes his own Sonship from the relationship he is opening up for his people. He also does not stop calling God his God. The risen Christ remains truly man, truly dependent, truly obedient, and he brings his disciples into the same relationship he has with the Father. The verse is both a sending and an adoption notice.
What Mary Magdalene Heard at the Tomb
John places this scene in a garden, early, while it was still dark enough that Mary did not recognise Jesus at first. She had come to the tomb weeping, and when she saw him she supposed he was the gardener. Then he spoke her name, and she knew him. Her instinct was to hold on. Whatever she meant by it, the risen Lord redirected her grip into a mission. He did not rebuke her affection. He gave it somewhere to go: to his brothers, with words he wanted spoken in his own phrasing.
The message itself is unusual because of how carefully it is worded. Jesus does not simply say, tell them I am alive. He gives her a sentence about the Father and about God, and he gives it in first person and second person together. The same God is his Father and their Father, his God and their God. That is not a casual phrasing. John, who spent a whole Gospel showing the unique relationship between the Son and the Father, records this as the first message of the risen Christ to his gathered people.
Notice the direction of the movement. Jesus is ascending. He is not drifting away from his humanity; he is going to the Father as the one who has finished the work given to him. And in the middle of that ascent he turns and calls his disciples brothers. The one who is going up is the one who is drawing others in. The resurrection does not end his relationship with his people; it establishes it on new footing. He is not ashamed to call them brothers, as Hebrews 2:11-12 puts it, and this scene is that sentence acted out in a garden.
Mary is the first witness and the first messenger. She is sent by Jesus with a message about Jesus to the people who would carry it to the world. John has already shown her as faithful at the cross and at the tomb; now she is the first to hear and first to speak. Whatever we make of later disputes about church order, this moment is plain: the risen Christ chose a woman who had been delivered of much to carry the first announcement of his resurrection to the men he called brothers.
Why Jesus Said My Father and Your Father
The two halves of the sentence are joined by and, not by a comma that erases the distinction. If Jesus had said only our Father, we might conclude that he and his disciples stand on identical footing before God. If he had said only my Father, we might conclude that the relationship is his alone and ours is something lesser. He says both, and the both is the gospel. He has a Father in a way no one else does, and he gives his people a share in that same Father.
John's Gospel has prepared us for exactly this. In the opening chapters Jesus speaks of God as his Father in a way that provoked hostility; his hearers understood that he was making himself equal with God. Yet in the upper room he prays that his followers would be one as he and the Father are one, and he tells them the Father loves them. The relationship is not transferred by title only. It is opened by the work he completes on the cross, the tomb he leaves, and the Spirit he sends.
So the my is not a fence; it is a fountain. Everything Jesus has as Son he shares with those who are joined to him. His Father becomes their Father. His inheritance becomes theirs. His access becomes theirs. Ephesians 1:17 speaks of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, giving a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, and that sentence stands in the same family of thought: the God who is Jesus' God is the God who gives himself to believers.
This is what the New Testament means by adoption. It is not a metaphor for a general kindness. It is a legal and relational transfer, grounded in the Son's own Sonship and applied by the Spirit. When believers pray Our Father, they are using words that belong to them because they belong to Christ. The my and your in John 20:17 are not equal in origin, but they are one in result: the same Father, the same household, the same family table.
My God and Your God: The Son Who Still Worships
The second half of the verse is easy to rush past. Jesus says not only my Father and your Father, but also my God and your God. The risen, glorified, ascended Lord still calls God his God. He does not cease to be the Son who depends on the Father, trusts the Father, and obeys the Father. His exaltation does not dissolve his humanity; it completes his mission as the man who perfectly honoured God on our behalf.
This is a strange comfort and a strong correction. Strange, because we might assume that resurrection means Jesus moves on from the language of need. Strong, because it shows us what humanity was always meant to be: a creature in glad, unbroken dependence on its Maker. Jesus is the true human, the one who lives by every word that comes from God, and he is still doing so after the tomb. If dependence is weakness, then the risen Christ is weak. But dependence is not weakness; it is creatureliness, and he wears it without shame.
It also means that when he gives us his God, he is not handing us a lesser relationship than his own. He is handing us a participation in his own. The God he trusts becomes the God we trust. The posture he takes becomes the posture we take. He is the elder brother who says, in effect, this is the God I worship; I am bringing you to him. The Lord's own devotion is the pattern of ours, not a wall between his access and our own.
Some Christian traditions have worried that saying Jesus has a God sounds like diminishing him. The New Testament itself is not worried. It says plainly that the head of Christ is God, and it records the risen Christ speaking of my God. Whatever careful distinctions we make about his two natures, the text gives us no permission to edit the sentence. Read it as it stands: the Son who is one with the Father is also the Son who calls him God, and he brings his brothers with him.
Do Not Hold Me: Why the Sending Came First
Jesus' first words in this exchange sound sharp, but they are not a rebuke of love. Mary has found the one she lost, and she reacts the way love reacts. His correction concerns timing and purpose. There is work for her to do, and it begins with a message. The affection is not cancelled; it is directed. In the economy of God, communion and commission travel together. Those who have seen the Lord are sent by him.
There is also something here about the nature of resurrection faith. Mary wanted to keep Jesus as she had known him, present in the garden in the same way. He tells her that a new mode of relationship is beginning, one that does not depend on his physical location. He is ascending, and from the Father he will send the Spirit so that his people are not orphans. What she is about to lose in close physical presence she will gain in an unbroken spiritual presence.
This shifts how we read the whole scene. The tomb is not a place to camp. It is a doorway. The risen Christ meets us there, but he does not let us build shelters on the spot. He sends us to others with words about him. That is what the church has always done: receive the risen Lord in the word and the supper, and go out to speak of him. The pattern starts here, with a woman sent from a garden with a message she did not invent.
And the message is about relationship before it is about anything else. Before doctrine, before mission strategy, before apologetics, the risen Jesus says: tell them about the Father and about God, and tell them they are family. Everything the church does in the world flows from that. If we lose the family language, we lose the engine. If we keep it, we have something to say to a world full of orphans.
The Cry of Dereliction and the Risen Message
It is worth setting this gentle message against another cry from the same Lord. Matthew 27:46 records that about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lima sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34 has the same cry in Aramaic. The words my God appear in both the cross and the resurrection, but the tone could hardly be more different.
On the cross, the words are anguish. He is quoting Psalm 22:1-2, where the psalmist says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?” The psalm goes on to describe a sufferer surrounded by enemies, and it ends in praise. Jesus takes the opening lament on his own lips at the darkest hour, bearing the abandonment that our sin deserved. The my God of the cross is the my God of the one who is under judgment for us.
Three days later, the same phrase is calm, familial, unafraid. My God and your God. The anguish has been answered. The psalm that begins with forsakenness ends with a congregation of worshippers, and the resurrection is where that turn becomes history. What was cried in the darkness is now spoken in the dawn, and the meaning of the words has changed because the work has been finished. The same Lord speaks both, and both are true.
This pairing guards us from a shallow resurrection faith. The tomb is not a happy ending pasted onto a tragedy. It is God's answer to the cry. The Father who seemed far off at Golgotha is the Father to whom the Son now ascends, and he is bringing his brothers with him. If we read John 20:17 without Matthew 27:46, we may miss the cost. If we read the cry without the message, we may miss the outcome. Together they tell the whole truth.
Brothers, Not Servants: What the Message Creates
Jesus calls them brothers before they have believed. They had scattered, denied, and hidden. Thomas was absent; Peter had cursed; the rest had fled. Yet the risen Christ calls them his brothers. That word is not a reward for faithfulness; it is a gift given to failures. The same pattern stands in Hebrews 2:11-12, where the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one, and he is not ashamed to call them brothers. He is not ashamed. That is the heart of the message.
The word brothers also makes the church a family, not a crowd. The New Testament applies it to men and women together, and the church has always understood it that way: a household with one Father, one elder brother, and a shared inheritance. Mary is sent to the brothers, and she is included in the family the message announces. The distinction of persons does not create a hierarchy of worth. It creates a household with a firstborn Son who gathers the rest.
This has practical weight. If God is our Father, then fellow believers are our siblings, and that changes how we treat them. It changes how we handle conflict, how we share resources, how we speak about one another. It also changes how we face death, because the family into which we are adopted is not ended by the grave. The one who calls us brothers has been through death and come out the other side, and he is not letting go of the family.
And it is the ground of assurance. If the risen Christ says my Father and your Father, then our standing does not rest on the quality of our devotion on any given morning. It rests on the one who spoke those words and ascended to make them true. Mary's job was to go and say it. Our job is to believe it, and then to say it to others, because the message is still the message, and the family is still open.
What This Verse Means for Prayer and Worship
When we pray, we pray to the God of Jesus. Not to a vague deity, not to an abstract force, but to the Father whom the Son calls his own and shares with us. The Lord's Prayer begins with our Father because the risen Christ has made that address possible. Our access is not bold presumption; it is blood-bought privilege, and it comes to us through the one who first said it.
Worship follows the same line. We honour the Father as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we honour the Son who brings us near. We do not have to choose between the two, and we should not. Some traditions emphasise the Father and treat Jesus mainly as a means. Others emphasise Jesus and treat the Father as distant. The verse holds them together: the Son is going to the Father, and he is bringing us, and the God he loves is the God we love.
There is also a missionary shape here. The first act of the risen Christ toward his people was a message to be delivered. Announcement precedes explanation. The women ran; the disciples heard; the church grew. Evangelism, at its root, is not a technique but a delivery of good news about the Father and the Son. If we have heard it, we are the ones sent to speak it, and the words have not lost their power.
Finally, the verse teaches patience about our own sanctification. Jesus is still calling God his God, and he calls us brothers while we are still learning. He is not waiting for us to become worthy of the family name. He has made us family, and he is teaching us to live like it. The my God and your God is both a gift already given and a lesson still being learned.
Biblical fidelity check
What the passage establishes is clear. The risen Jesus has a Father and a God, and he shares that relationship with his disciples, calling them brothers. It establishes the distinction between his Sonship and ours, and it establishes the reality of our adoption. It does not establish that Jesus is merely a creature, nor that he ceased to be God. It also does not establish that our relationship with the Father is identical to his in every respect, as if the words my and your meant nothing. Both halves stand.
A common misreading is to use my God and your God to prove that the risen Jesus is no more than a holy man. That reading borrows weight from the two words and ignores the rest of John, where Jesus claims oneness with the Father and receives worship from Thomas. Another misreading flattens the distinction and treats the sentence as if it said our Father, which the text does not say. Faithful Christians have differed over how to describe the person of Christ precisely, but the verse itself must be allowed to say both things at once, and it does.
Other passages that speak to John 20:17-18
If you want to trace this theme through the rest of Scripture, several studies open it up. The John Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in John follows the Son's relationship to the Father across the whole Gospel, including this garden scene. The Hebrews Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in Hebrews takes up the theme of the risen Christ who is not ashamed to call his people brothers. The Ephesians Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in Ephesians explores the Father of glory who is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the 1 John Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in 1 John shows what it looks like to live as children of that Father.
Frequently asked questions
Why did Jesus tell Mary not to hold him?
Jesus was not rejecting Mary's love. He was redirecting it into a mission. He had not yet ascended, and there was a message she needed to carry to his brothers. The resurrection begins a new phase of relationship, one that will not depend on his physical presence in a garden. Mary wanted to keep what she had found; Jesus gave her something to do with it. Affection and obedience belong together, and she was the first to learn that from the risen Lord himself.
Does calling God his God mean Jesus is not divine?
No. The same Gospel that records my God and your God also records Thomas calling Jesus his Lord and his God, and Jesus accepting it. The New Testament consistently presents Jesus as one with the Father and as the Son who lives in dependence on him. His humanity is real, and so is his deity. John 20:17 shows the risen Christ as the true man who trusts God, not as a creature who falls short of divinity. He is both.
What does it mean that Jesus calls his disciples brothers?
It means they share his Father and his God. The one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one, and he is not ashamed to call them brothers. This is adoption language, and it is given to weak, failing people, not to the deserving. It gives believers a family, an inheritance, and a standing before God that rests on Christ. It also obliges them to treat one another as family.
