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Biblical Exhortation to Dads #1: Imitate Your Heavenly Father
How can we be dads who honor God and bless our families?
Thankfully, God has told us in His Word what He expects from fathers. In this new series of articles, we’re going through a list of biblical exhortations for fathers. In our last article, we looked at the first exhortation: Imitate Your Heavenly Father [Link].
Let’s look at the next item on our list.
Biblical Exhortation #2: Love Your Wife and Children
In Ephesians, Paul makes the explicit connection between believers imitating God and walking in love:
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph 5:1-2).
What does it look like to imitate God? A key indicator is walking in love for others. And what does that mean? To just have strong affection for everyone? To have warm feelings for others?
It’s deeper than that. The word used for love here is agape and speaks of active, self-sacrificing love. Paul tells us that is how Jesus loved us and that is how we are to love others. Christ loved us to the point of giving his life for us on the cross.
The Apostle John echoes this point and goes so far as to say that this type of love is such a predominant feature of a true Christian that anyone who does not walk in this type of love is not truly a believer:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7-11)
So, for Christian fathers, we need to be walking in love towards others in general, but especially towards our wives and our children.
Loving Your Wife is Foundational to Good Parenting
This may not seem obvious, but If you want to be a dad who honors God in parenting your children, the first foundational thing you need to do is love your wife.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church (Eph 5:25-29).
One of the best things you can do for your kids is to love your wife sacrificially. Strengthening your marriage creates stability and a strong foundation in the home. If you’re focused on being the best dad you can be, but you’re a lousy husband, you’re short-circuiting your parenting efforts. Seek to love your wife like Christ loved the church and you will build your home into an environment that your children can thrive. Don’t be selfish. Don’t seek to meet your own needs. Seek your wife’s purity and spiritual growth like Jesus does for the church.
If that is the foundation for your home, you can then walk in love in parenting your children. This will seem obvious, but we need to love our children if we are to be honoring God as dads. And again, this isn’t just mere affection. It’s beyond that. It’s that active, sacrificial agape love. It’s sacrificing your time, your desires, and yourself for your children. Don’t be a selfish dad. Don’t prioritize your own wants and needs over your kids’ needs.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Phil 2:3-4).
If you’re teaching your children about God and you provide for them, but you’re not showing sacrificial love for them, you’re missing the mark. Displaying Christ-like love to your wife and children is foundational to honor God as a father.