Fatherhood in God’s Image

Things that are sacred need to be protected. Things that are blessings also need to be protected. You have insurance on your house, a pantry for your groceries, a bank for your cash, a barn for your hay, a lock on your car. Blessings need to be protected.

There are few things more sacred and more of a blessing than children. No matter how a child comes, that child is a blessing (Psalm 127–128), and Jesus commands you not to despise them (Matt. 18:10). No matter how often children come, no matter how loud and sticky they are, children are blessings. They need to be protected.

Fatherhood is a good gift of God given for the protection of children. Just like God our Father protects His children, so also our earthly fathers are given by God for the protection of their children. Man finds the perfect example for his own fatherhood in the Fatherhood of God. The Fatherhood of God should shape, form and order the fatherhood of man.

Yet, so often, instead of forming our fatherhood in God’s image, we end up with a skewed view of God’s Fatherhood because of our twisted image of earthly fatherhood. Modernism and modern life have made fatherhood optional at best, and at worst penalized it. In the last century, we have redefined marriage and reconstructed fatherhood in our image and after our likeness.

Our sinful flesh is destructive. But God’s fatherhood is not destructive. Just the opposite: His Fatherhood is how we are saved and brought into the family of faith. Just so, God calls earthly fathers to raise their own children in the family of faith, to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

Our sinful flesh is selfish. But God’s fatherhood is sacrificial. All He does is give. He asks for nothing in return but fidelity. He gives and gives of Himself even sending His greatest Treasure to be sacrificed to protect His children. This selflessness is the duty of earthly fathers as well.[1]

As fathers seek to imitate God in His great Fatherhood, here are three of the essential ways in which fathers protect their children:

1. Fathers protect children from fatherlessness

This may seem like a redundant statement, but it is an important one. Fatherlessness is bad and fatherhood protects children from it.

God has ordered life in a very specific way. When we buck against that, it is to our detriment. We must not pretend fatherhood is optional or unimportant, but understand how crucial fathers are to their children, by God’s good design.

Usually after a baby is born, her mother will be in the room or somewhere close by. The question is whether or not the same will be true of the father. It is imperative for the father to be there as a permanent figure in the house to protect the children from fatherlessness. It is important for the father to be there not just at the birth, but throughout the child’s upbringing — at church on Sunday, at the supper table at night.

More and more secular research is showing us what we have always known through biblical wisdom: The presence of a father, alongside that of a mother, directly influences a child’s cognitive development, his capacity for a higher vocabulary, more complex language skills, social-emotional development and more.[2] Data shows that almost 75% of American children living in fatherless households experience poverty before the age of eleven, that adult men who grew up without fathers often represent around 70% of the prison population serving long-term sentences[3], that 63% of children’s suicides were children without a father[4], 85% of the youth in prison come from a fatherless home[5], and 85% of children who show behavioral disorders do not have a father.[6] In general, we have more than abundant evidence and research that fathers are necessary for raising kind and moral children.[7] Fatherhood protects children from fatherlessness. Fatherhood is not optional.

2. Fathers protect children from people who want to hurt them

An evident example of fatherly protection is the physical protection that fathers provide for children. Research shows that adolescent females with fathers in the home are 70% less likely to be targeted for sex trafficking; 50% less likely to suffer from abuse and neglect; and 40% less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs as children.[8]

This is one reason why men are built the way they are: to protect children. Men are built differently than women, in God’s wisdom. One of the reasons God has built men with physical strength is to protect children from those who want to hurt them.

I often hear mothers and fathers who struggle raising little boys — because sometimes, let’s be honest, raising a little boy can be like having a small feral boar in your home. But this is necessary. Little boys have to be dangerous because one day, they will have to be dangerous for someone. Don’t hinder it, channel it. Because one day that boy will be a father who will have to protect his children. Support him.

3. Fathers protect children from Satan

Finally, the father is a gift of God to protect his children from the devil, who is actively waging a war against the children of God and seeking to devour them (1 Peter 5:8; Rev. 12:17). Here we speak of the spiritual protection fathers are called to provide to children. We stated above how the father must be present at the supper table, here we speak of how the father must be present at the Lord’s Supper Table.

In the fourth century, Satan’s heresy of the day was calling into question the truth that God was eternally Father. In the 21st century, his heresy is calling into question whether human fathers are necessary at all. Satan’s war against fatherhood has included no fault divorce. It has cascaded into same-sex marriage, and a host of other perversions and sins which have become so commonplace.

In the undoing of fatherhood, what do we see? Do we see liberation? Progress? Improvement? No, all we have is a hurting church, broken families and damaged children. This is not what we see in the Fatherhood of God, and it is not His will for the fatherhood of man.

Fathers protect children from Satan. My father did not go to college. He had no theological education. He didn’t say much. But there was no question if we were going to church on Sunday — we were going. This is the duty of fathers: to take their children to the Divine Service, raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6), teach them all the Lord has done for them in redemption from slavery to sin (Deut. 6), and instruct them in the way they should go (Prov. 22:6). In this way, the father protects the blessing of children from the assaults of the devil.

David once sang in a psalm, “the Lord … trains my hands for war” (Psalm 144:1). David goes on about the purpose of that war: so “our sons [can] be like plants full grown, our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace” (Psalm 144:12). David’s whole life was marked by fighting. His whole life was marked by war so that his son Solomon could have peace in his life.

This is the duty of fathers. Let us give thanks to our Heavenly Father from whom our human fatherhood is derived for providing such a fence of fatherly protection around the souls of blessed children. Be a father or support a father, for through this gift, God protects one of His greatest blessings.

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Photo: LCMS Communications/Erik M. Lunsford

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[1] Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 67.

[2] University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Fathers Influence Child Language Development More Than Mothers.” ScienceDaily, Nov. 1, 2006, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061030183039.htm. See also Kathleen Boyce and Hilary A. Rose, “Risk and Resiliency Factors Among Adolescents Who Experience Marital Transition,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 64, no. 4 (Nov. 2002): 1029, 1031.

[3] Wade Horn, “Educating for Virtue: The New Values Revolution” (speech, Coronado, California, January 17, 1997).

[4] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of the Census, 2009–2011.

[5] Texas Department of Corrections, 1992.

[6] Marvin Berkowitz and John H. Grych, “Fostering Goodness: Teaching Parents to Facilitate Children’s Moral Development,” Journal of Moral Education (September 1998): 371; R. Farber Kestenbaum and L.A. Sroufe, “Individual Differences in Empathy among Preschoolers: Relation to Attachment History, New Directions for Child Development 44 (1989): 51–64; M.H. Uzendorn, “Attachment, Emergent Morality and Aggression: Toward a Developmental Socio-Economic Model of Antisocial Behavior,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 21 (April 1997): 703–27.

[7] Marvin Berkowitz and John H. Grych, “Fostering Goodness: Teaching Parents to Facilitate Children’s Moral Development.” Journal of Moral Education (September 1998): 371; R. Farber Kestenbaum and L.A. Sroufe, “Individual Differences in Empathy among Preschoolers: Relation to Attachment History, New Directions for Child Development 44 (1989): 51–64; M.H. Uzendorn, “Attachment, Emergent Morality and Aggression: Toward a Developmental Socio-Economic Model of Antisocial Behavior,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 21 (April 1997): 703–27; Kathleen Boyce and Hilary A. Rose, Washington State University, “Risk and Resiliency Factors Among Adolescents Who Experience Marital Transition,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 64, no. 4 (Nov. 2002): 1029, 1031. 

[8]  Binta Alleyne-Green, Claudette Grinnell-Davis et al., “Father Involvement, Dating Violence, and Sexual Risk Behaviors Among a National Sample of Adolescent Females,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 31, no. 5 (March 2016).