Read Previous Articles in this Series:
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #1: Imitate Your Heavenly Father
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #2: Love Your Wife and Children
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #3: Lead Your Family
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #4: Provide for Your Family
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #5: Protect Your Family’
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #6: Disciple Your Children
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #7: Discipline Your Children
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #8: Pray For Your Children
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #9: Guard Your Heart
Biblical Exhortations to Dads #10: Enjoy Your Children
In a recent series of articles, we’ve been exploring biblical exhortations for fathers. Specifically, we’ve been examining how God expects fathers to honor Him and bless their families. So far, we’ve looked at the following exhortations:
- Imitate Your Heavenly Father
- Love Your Wife and Children
- Lead Your Family
- Provide for Your Family
- Protect Your Family
- Disciple Your Children
- Discipline Your Children
- Pray for Your Children
- Guard Your Heart
- Enjoy Your Children
In this final article, we will look at a final biblical exhortation for fathers. Last, and certainly not least:
Point Your Children to Christ
We’ve alluded to this in previous articles, but our most important responsibility as fathers is to point our children to Jesus. We can’t save our children, but we can constantly point them to the One who can.
The gospel should be infused into every aspect of family life. In all of our parenting, we must point our children to the sin in their hearts and the One who can cure it.
If we just teach them about the rules of the Bible, we will raise little legalists who think they can earn God’s salvation. We don’t want to raise little Pharisees who have a lot of head-knowledge, but zero heart-knowledge of God.
The clear message of the gospel is that all have sinned against God and the just punishment for that sin is an eternity of punishment in Hell. Out of His great love for us, God sent His only son, Jesus, to earth to live a perfect life. When Jesus was crucified on the cross, He took our place. God poured out His wrath on Jesus for every sin that those who would place their faith in Him would ever commit. He was our substitute and paid the debt we can never pay on our own. On the cross, Jesus defeated sin. On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and defeated death.
By repenting of our sins—abhorring and decisively turning from them—and placing our faith in Jesus, we can be saved. We can go from death to life. We can go from being children of Satan to being children of God. We can avoid eternal death and have eternal life.
This is the message we need to be bringing to our kids consistently and diligently:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-4)
Their eternal souls are at stake, so we cannot be content with merely trying to train good behavior.
We need to teach our children about Jesus. We need to teach them about His goodness and holiness and how He sacrificed Himself for us. We need to be teaching them about our need for Him. And, if, by the grace of God, they turn to faith in Christ, we need to point them to becoming like Jesus in our discipleship. As Paul said:
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Cor 11:1).
From beginning to end, we must be pointing our children to Jesus.
Conclusion
That brings us to the end of our list. Reviewing all eleven exhortations might leave you feeling discouraged or intimidated. I know this was convicting for me. I don’t do all of those things like I should. Who can do all 11 of those things perfectly?
The answer is none of us. That’s why we need Jesus. When we fail as fathers, which we will, we can turn to Christ and seek forgiveness and comfort in Him.
As Christians, our standing before God is not based on our parenting. It’s based on the righteousness of Christ. Because we are already forgiven through Jesus, we don’t have to earn our salvation by being a perfect parent. We can seek to honor God and obey what He has commanded about parenting out of love for Him.
When we fail as fathers, we should use even that to point our children to Christ. When we sin against our children, we should apologize to them and seek their forgiveness. We should use that as an opportunity to let our children know that we are sinners and we need the forgiveness that only comes from Jesus.
As you look at these eleven exhortations, look for areas where you can grow as a father. Pray for God’s help in being obedient in these areas.
By the grace of God, we can honor Him and bless our families when we seek to parent God’s way.
