The child senses that his father is someone who stands above him. A father does not ask his child: “Is this what you would like?” He commands. Those commands may be given in a kind tone of voice, but commands they are. They are expression of a higher will that transcends the will of the child. In the figure of father there is a “power” in the home which decides how things have to be and an authority that the child is to obey.[1]
—Abraham Kuyper
1. Abraham Kuyper, On Charity and Justice, ed. Matthew J. Tuininga, Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2022), 275, emphasis original.
There are many qualities to a father’s authority in the home that are an afront to our culture, but the qualities of command and superiority that Kuyper outlines above are perhaps the ones that most fail to align with contemporary expectations. You may read this quote and feel the urge to make qualifications about the loving and sacrificial nature of authoritative leadership in God’s world. While those qualifications have merit in some sense, the urge to present them probably reveals more than mere concern about the abuse of authority. Indeed, it may ultimately reveal our uneasiness with the goodness and necessity of paternal authority itself.
A father stands above. Usually, this is quite literally and physically true. The father is the tallest member of the family, at least until his son potentially surpasses him as he himself approaches adulthood. But more importantly, the father’s superiority is positionally true. The father is the ruler of the home. His authority surpasses that of any other member.
Moreover, the superiority of the father is necessary. Hierarchy is not only inevitable in God’s world, it is actually a design feature. When fathers fear the Lord and embrace their necessary role of leadership in the home, the family is positioned to function well and thrive. The father’s unique role as the head creates a broad wake of benevolent provision and protection from which the whole family benefits.[2]
2. It is also noteworthy that the apostles used paternal language for those under their care and rejoiced as fathers in the growth and successes of their loved ones (e.g., 1 Tim. 1:2; 3 John 4).
Kuyper likewise noted that, “A father impresses his child with a sense of justice.”[3] His power is consequential and orients the family’s values. He represents the Lord and his concerns for the family. He leads the family into righteousness, disciplines the insubordinate, instructs the immature, and provides liberally for the well-being of all. As the primary authority in his home, the father most represents the role that our Heavenly Father occupies in his creation.
3. Kuyper, On Charity and Justice, 275.
Yet when a father fails to embrace his necessary and God-given role, the entire family struggles. This failure can be through ignorance, absence, and sometimes even through malevolence. But the family that does not have a well-functioning head will falter. Without a God-fearing father, the family is led by circumstance and caprice into chaos.
It is critical, therefore, that we understand and practice paternal authority well. In this article, I will briefly define the nature and use of paternal authority, warn against its two primary misuses, and conclude with a reflection on the godly legacy that biblical paternal authority brings.
The Nature of Paternal Authority
A Genuine Authority
Righteous paternal authority begins with delegation. As with all authority in his world, it is the Lord who has designated fathers to be the rulers of their families. This provides for both legitimate authority and necessary accountability, a pair which God has rendered inseparable. Because he calls men to be husbands and fathers, they are endowed by him with real authority in those roles. Fatherhood is a trust. The Lord calls us to act, and he will hold us accountable for how we exercise that authority.
That fathers have authority is unavoidable. As Joe Rigney helpfully notes:
The headship of the husband is a fact, not a command. The Bible does not teach that a husband ought to be head of his wife and his household. It teaches that he is the head of his household, whether he wants to be or not. Male headship is a given. It may be a domineering headship. It may be an absentee headship. But one way or another, the husband is the head. Period. The only question is whether he will be an unfaithful head like Adam, or a faithful head like Christ.[4]
4. Joe Rigney, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2024), 55.
The father’s authority functions as the most basic orienting factor in his home. Ordinarily, his wife and children will love who and what he loves and hate what he hates. And make no mistake, both love and hatred are necessary and inevitable in our fallen world. Psalm 15 asks the profound question, “O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” Part of the answer is found in verse 4: It is the man “in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord (cf. Prov. 29:27).
So, a father must have rightly ordered loves so that he can instruct his wife (Eph. 5:25–28) and his children in righteousness. The father is, both in word and deed, the primary instructor in his home:
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Eph. 6:4)
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. (Deut. 6:7; cf. 11:19)
Paternal authority is pervasive; it spreads through the entire family culture. It is the property of the father by virtue of his role as father. He cannot help but instruct because his role is instructive. Those under him are consistently guided by his words, attitudes, and actions. By virtue of his authority, those under him are shaped by him, for good or for ill. Wise fathers recognize this power and seek to exercise it humbly and faithfully under the authority of the Lord whom they fear.
A Loving Authority
The most profound application of paternal authority is found in a father’s love. The fundamental disposition of the father is not to stand upon the uttermost step of his authority, casting commands to those below. It is to stand alongside, encouraging and instructing, warning and directing. In twenty-five years of fathering, I have found these words from the father in Proverbs to be most instructive:
My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways. (Prov. 23:26)
The father seeks to win his children’s hearts. He wins them with love and faithful instruction. He wins them by modeling a righteous life and encouraging his children in the path of righteousness. He wins their hearts by knowing them well, caring for them individually, and by fostering their love and connection with the other members of the family.
The wise father also does this by loving and cherishing his wife and by leading his children to love and respect her as well. She is their mother, and she is his wife. The authority he possesses as her husband should result in her growth in the gospel through being loved well by him. And as his children witness his genuine and consistent love for her, they will love and respect her as a result.
Puritan minister William Gouge helps us here: “Yet there are no unequals betwixt which there is so near a parity as betwixt man and wife,”[5] and “none can be nearer than a wife, and none ought to be dearer.”[6] As part of his duty of love, there should be an “unfeigned and earnest, entire and ardent affection which an husband ought to bear unto his wife.” Further, “because of the husband’s place of authority, he must especially take all occasions to manifest this his inward affection.”[7]
5. William Gouge, Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises (London: Iohn Haviland for William Bladen), 1622.
6. Gouge, Domesticall Duties, 4:8.
7. Gouge, Domesticall Duties, 4:11.
The Misuse of Paternal Authority
As with any good in God’s world, paternal authority can be used for ill, and when it is, the devastation is spectacular. This is hardly surprising, as there is a direct relationship between the potency of a good and the evil effects of its abuse.
When it comes to paternal authority, Scripture most often warns against two extremes: harsh anger and dismissive neglect. Ephesians 6:4 warns, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Again, Gouge instructs us; “Immoderate severity” provokes children because it
argueth no love in the parent, but rather hatred . . . it softeneth not the child’s heart, but hardeneth it rather. It maketh him dull, and stupid, and clean perverteth the right and true end of correction. It oft maketh a child think of doing some mischief to his parent or himself.[8]
8. Gouge, Domesticall Duties, 6:49.
Fathers can be especially prone to this kind of destructive anger. Part of masculine sanctification is cultivating a kind of gospel humility by God’s grace that translates into long-suffering and hope-filled perseverance with our children.
So, overbearing harshness is truly destructive. But the other extreme is not any better. Gouge also warned his readers against “too much lenity,” or exercising gentleness when sternness is in fact required. Paternal abdication is one of the great scourges of our age, and its devastating effects surround us. As has been well-chronicled, ours is an increasingly fatherless nation. Even in Scripture it seems that we find more examples of fatherly failure than fatherly triumph.
Eli is a classic example. Though entrusted with the role of priest in Israel, he was not a faithful father. In Samuel 2:12 we read, “Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord.” Further, they did not treat the Lord’s offering with reverence, and they exploited their positions for personal gain. First Samuel 2:17 provides the sad verdict: “Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt.”
The story gets worse. His sons were also sexually immoral, and Eli’s response was tepid, to say the least (1 Sam. 2:22–25):
Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.
Eli balked at the responsibility the Lord had given him. He barked, but he did not bite. He scolded, but he did not discipline. His failure to act decisively ultimately led to their demise, as foretold by the Lord to Samuel:
And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. (1 Sam. 3:13–14, emphasis added)
“He did not restrain them.” Those are sobering words. Pastors are all-too-familiar with abdicating fathers. The self-apparent results of their neglect of God’s design for them in their homes vindicates Scripture’s teaching. Fathers must embrace their roles in the fear of the Lord or their families will suffer.
The Legacy of Paternal Authority
By contrast, faithful fathers exercise great power for good in God’s world. Rightly directed masculinity is a potent, benevolent force. The Bible’s vision for fathers is truly inspiring:
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Ps. 127:4–5)
What greater legacy can a man have than to launch his children into a future he will not see, equipped in the fear of the Lord to love their spouses and children, to love the Lord and his church, and to exercise dominion in their Father’s world for his glory and for the good of those he entrusts to them?
A godly father sacrifices for the sake of those under his authority. He builds so that they may prosper. He instructs and corrects so that they may be wise. He lives for a cause greater than himself: the glory of the Lord made manifest in the lives of his children. In our day, that means that a godly father is a potent and effective force against the emasculating shrieks of feminism––shrieks that label masculinity itself as a toxic thing.
Satan has been shrewd to attack men. He recognizes the potency of paternity. He hates it, and he does all he can to destroy it. Yet our Father is at work. He saves and sanctifies men who can then faithfully imitate him and bring multi-generational blessing in their wake:
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children. (Ps. 103:17)
A father stands above, representing the Lord, so that those under him may one day surpass him. Brothers, fear the Lord and stand for his great call upon your life.
