God has made man the covenant authority in the marriage relationship. This means a man must provide for and protect his family. This includes leading his wife and children spiritually. Husbands have a responsibility to lead their wives towards Christ.

This means the husband is to make sure the couple is praying, reading Scripture, attending church, and worshiping God with their whole lives. If the wife is struggling spiritually, the husband has an obligation to help her and seek her spiritual good. Her spiritual well-being is his responsibility.

Men must also lead in training their children in the faith. God has commanded parents to teach God’s Word to their children:

these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

The Apostle Paul echoes this when he writes:

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

Notice the instruction is specifically to “fathers” [οἱ πατέρες, hoi pateres]. While οἱ πατέρες (hoi pateres) can refer to “parents” in general, as in Hebrews 11:23, the context here indicates Paul is addressing “fathers” in particular (as translated by the ESV, KJV, NASB, and NET).

As P. T. O’Brien notes, there is a change in wording to οἱ πατέρες (hoi pateres) in Ephesians 6:4 from τοῖς γονεῦσιν (tois goneusin, “parents”) in 6:1, and “in both Graeco-Roman and Jewish writings, fathers were responsible for the education of their children.”[1]

Two additional points can be made. First, Paul uses the word παιδείᾳ (paideia, “instruction”) in Ephesians 6:4, which is a word elsewhere used four times in the context of a father’s obligation to “discipline” his son (Hebrews 12:5, 7, 8, 11).

Second, Paul distinguishes between “father” and “mother” [τὸν πατέρα σου καὶ τὴν μητέρα] in Ephesians 6:2, using the singular πατέρα (patera, “father”) and then the plural πατέρες (pateres, “fathers”) two verses later in 6:4. If Paul wanted to speak specifically to fathers, οἱ πατέρες (oi pateres) were the words to use.

Therefore, although children are to obey both “parents,” honoring both father and mother (the Fifth Commandment), fathers have a special responsibility to raise children in the Christian faith (Ephesians 6:1-4).

One of the purposes of marriage is to produce “godly offspring,” or more literally, a “godly seed” (Malachi 2:15). Children are made “holy”—set apart and sanctified—by having just one Christian parent (1 Corinthians 7:14). Thus, this is a great obligation given to parents to raise their children to love and worship and obey Jesus Christ. And this obligation ultimately rests with fathers.

[1] Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 445.

This article is adapted from chapter 7 of my book Masculine Christianity (Zion Press, 2020).