Scriptural Insights on Fatherhood

We learn how to be fathers to our own children as we seek to treat our kids the way our perfect Dad has treated us, his sons. Our ultimate goal must be that our children would grow to love and worship our God. This simple refrain is repeated on a multitude of occasions throughout Scripture, where it says that a particular generation worshiped the God of their fathers, because God intends for children to worship the same God as their dads (chapter 1).

But Paul is also aware that some fathers have a tendency to be harsh, mean, overbearing, or intimidating with their children. This sort of frightening and provoking fathering exasperates, frustrates, and angers children. The biblical goal of a father is not to crush his children but to cultivate them. A father's goal is not to punish his children, but instead to correct them. On the other hand, some fathers are so fearful of frustrating their children that they fail to discipline them at all, which is a cowardly overreaction to child abuse and is abusive in its own right. Instead of abusing children or abandoning them by failing to correct them, a godly father brings his children up with wise training and instruction in the Lord. The ancient Greeks who heard Paul's words would have understood his language as referring to the total shaping of a person that includes their education, spirituality, work ethic, vocation, social skills, and so on (chapter 3).

Friends who love God and live righteously are wonderful influences upon a child. Your children will benefit from playing with their children and seeing their marriages. A wise father will not tuck his children away to be hidden and uninvolved in the life of his church and friends, but rather integrate them into the church community, developing friendships with people of all ages, thereby reinforcing his instruction as they see the benefits of wisdom in the lives of many people (chapter 4).

A wise dad may realize that a personal quiet time for himself is unwise; rather than hiding away in a quiet place to read the Bible, it is often best to do so in the noisy living room where the kids can see and climb on their dad while he reads his Bible. Also, if dad frequently has his Bible open, his children will be more likely to ask him questions about God and life because they see that he possesses answers from God's Word (chapter 5).

Our only hope is men meeting Jesus and obeying his Word. We want the men to be different kinds of men, we want them to have different kinds of marriages, and we want them to have different kinds of children because they are sons of the King of Kings and that means something. And by different we mean holy (chapter 7).