>> “Brothers and fathers, listen to me.” <<
.
Seriously?
That is your “evidence?”
Logic demands understanding that he was respecting generational differences, not authority.
Accuracy demands that you recognize that what Jesus said --- without your interpretive gloss --- was, "Call no man on earth your father". Or "teacher". Or "instructor." Read back and forth through the chapter. There are no codicils here, no exceptions, and no modifications. By the plain words of Scripture --- as I've been so patiently schooled by my Evangelical brethren and sistren --- it's an exceptionless norm.
Romans 4:16
those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of us all, as it is written, I have made you the father of many nations)
1 Corinthians 4:15
Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.
Philemon 1:10
I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.
1 John 2:13
I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him Who is from the beginning.
If that was meant to be a flat-out imperative, then Stephen violated it when he called those men "father." Likewise John violated it when he addressed the older men in his congregation as "fathers". And emphatically, Paul violated the norm when he called himself the father of the Corinthian believers, as well as of Timothy and Onesimus.
You can't get around the fact that Jesus did not make exceptions in his statement, neither for natural fathers, nor for step-fathers, foster-fathers, adoptive fathers, distant ancestors, older men in the congregation, or Apostles: men who,like himself, preached, baptized, taught, governed, and thus called themselves, and were called, the fathers of believers.
All this converges to suggest only two reasonable inferences: either
This applies, as Jesus said in his exceptionless statement, to EVERY one called "father" --- even natural fathers ---that they have no primary original authority, but only secondary, derivative authority, since every father, of whatever kind, is a "type" of the real Father. It's only because they are types, that anyone --- even our natural fathers --- can be called 'father' at all:
Ephesians 3:14-15
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name.