Bible Basics about Fathers & Fatherhood

⇒ The Bible has a lot to say about fathers and fatherhood . . . some form of the word “father” appears times in verses of the ESV Bible. 

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, ESV)

1. Both father and mother are in God’s plan for healthy family formation. 

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12, ESV)

2. God commands us to our father and mother. 

3. To be fatherless is to be to greater injustice and harm.

²² You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. (Exodus 22:22, ESV)

⁵ Father of the fatherless and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation. (Psalm 68:5, ESV)

4. God expects fathers to their children.

⁸ Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
(Proverbs 1:8, ESV) 

5. God expects fathers to their children.

¹¹ My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline
or be weary of his reproof,
¹² for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.
(Proverbs 3:11-12, ESV) 

⁴ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
(Ephesians 6:4, ESV) 

6. God expects fathers to and to their children.

¹¹ For you know how, like a father with his children, ¹² we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12, ESV) 

7. God expects husbands and fathers to avoid the twin sins of and .

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ 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. (Ephesians 5:22-27, ESV) 

Husbands and fathers are to lead and to love
in their marriages and families,
just as Jesus leads and loves the church. 

8. Our relationship with our father is very important, but even more significant is our relationship with our Father through faith in Jesus Christ. 

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5, ESV)

⁶ And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galations 4:6, ESV)