Husbands and Fathers


On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers, and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910.[1]

Someone once said that the best gift a father can give his children is to love their mother. Not every father has that option. Obviously Sonora Dodd, who pushed for that first official day to honor fathers, having been raised by a widower, was not able to watch her father love her mother. Catastrophes and disease rob us of those we love. Divorce happens. Broken relationships litter the landscape of our world. Not every father has the option to love his children’s mother. In spite of that, it is difficult for us to separate the idea of being a husband and that of being a father.
The classic scripture passage that comes to mind when we think of family is the last of part of Ephesians 5 and the first part of Ephesians 6. In that passage we find 5 implications for men regarding loving your wife, and 2 directives for training your children.

5 Implications of Loving our Wives

Ephesians 5.25 is written in the context of verse 21, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” What does it mean for a husband to be submitting to his wife? Note that we are to love our wife “as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for her.” How did Christ love the church, and what does it mean to love my wife the same way?

1. The husband is to act redemptively toward his wife (Eph 5:23, 25) 

2. The husband is to take pleasure in his wife (Eph 5:27a)


3. The husband is to work for the glory of his wife, not himself (Eph 5:27b)


4. The husband is to love his wife as if she were his own body (Eph 5:28a)

5. The husband is to understand that loving his wife is in his own best interest (Eph 5:28b)

2 Directives for Training our Children

1. We are not to provoke them to anger (Eph 6:4)

2. We are to nurture them to maturity by training them and reminding them (Eph 6:4)


Being a husband and a father is not about us. Therein lies the problem. We hear “head” and we think “boss, commander and chief, CEO, authority...” We ought to think “servant.” We read, “Wives submit…” and we gladly embrace the idea without realizing that God is calling us, as husbands, to submit. God is calling us, as fathers to submit. Jesus said, I did not come to be served, but to serve. That’s the example we are to follow as “heads.” Men, God has called us to love our wives and nurture our children. It’s time we act like men by God’s definition.




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