It’s the meme-worthy hallmark of fatherhood: lawn care. Don the cargo shorts and New Balance sneakers and strive for the manicured stripes of Augusta. All is well until you peek across your neighbor’s cedar fence. “His lawn is so much greener!” Perhaps, but the water bill is higher.
Far too often baptist fathers (and mothers) are looking over the fence at the fruitfulness in the families of our paedobaptist brothers and conclude we need to go all-in on their program. It can seem that Presbyterians have a corner on the parenting market, as though you cannot be a baptist and raise your children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). However, a robust, aspirational vision for fathering flows naturally from a reformed baptist theology without the higher water bill of covenantal confusion.
The Shared Charge
Paedo- and credo-baptist fathers alike can agree on the clear directive in Ephesians 6:4. Paul doesn’t address the question of baptism in the passage. One’s convictions on baptism doesn’t change the charge: all fathers ought to bring up their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Paul clearly has Christians in view, but Christianity is not merely the religion or faith tradition we have chosen to believe. The revelation of the Triune God in Holy Scripture is true. It is baked into the fibers of all creation. Christ is actually over all. Therefore, it is required of all fathers to instruct their children with what accords to reality. Just as it would be wrong for a father to teach his children that two plus two equals five, so also it is wrong for him to teach and commend any other worldview besides the instruction of the Lord. He is abdicating his God-given role and responsibility.
The fatherly task of Ephesians 6:4 is two-fold: discipline and instruction. Both operate in the sphere of and in relation to the Lord. My fatherly mandate is not to do as I please with my children. It is not ultimately my discipline and instruction. As a father, I am not ultimate. I, too, am under authority. We can breeze over Paul’s exhortation to not provoke our children to anger when our focus is first on their discipline and instruction. If we are to provide the discipline and instruction of the Lord, we first need to know our own place. Fathers are first and foremost to operate under and in reference to lordship of Christ. Understanding our authority under Christ’s authority provides the right footing then to bring up our children. My objective—every dad’s objective—is to lead my children, following and imitating me, to relate rightly to the Lord and all of his instruction. That is, I have this wonderful, empowered, authorized commission to teach my children to observe all that Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:18–20).
The Paideia of the Lord
The goal of every Christian parent is not just to teach your kids Christian things. It is not enough that your kids know the commands of Christ. And this is what Paul is referencing when he says the “discipline … of the Lord.” The word he employs is paideia. The foremost scholarly resource on the meaning of Greek words describes this term as “the act of providing guidance for responsible living.”[1] Paideia is not merely corrective consequences like corporal punishment; it encapsulates a whole-life vision for what a child ought to be.
1. See “παιδεία,” in Walter Bauer et al., eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 748.
We gain insight into Paul’s meaning by considering the use of the word elsewhere. Paul writes of the all-encompassing profitability of inspired Scripture “for training (paideia) in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). The author of Hebrews briefly exposits Proverbs 3:11-12 to highlight the all-of-life sanctifying work of God that comes about through “the discipline (paideia) of the Lord” (Heb. 12:1–17). The Lord ordains various forms of hardship and suffering in our lives, like a good father, to yield righteousness. That penultimate father of Proverbs understood this holistic task, modeled not just in the correction of Proverbs 3 but all facets of life that he trains his son in throughout Proverbs 25–29. And the banner flying over the comprehensive vision of wise, faithful living? The paideia of Solomon (Prov. 25:1). The Greek translators understood such proverbs to be advancing this every-square-inch lordship of God in the life of a child.[2]
2. Cf. Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” in his 1880 speech, “Sphere Sovereignty,” at the Free University.
Additionally, a number of authors observe how this “paideia of the Lord” is drawing on the use of the term in Greek culture.[3] Plato defined it as “the art of living as well as possible.” The Greeks understood paideia to be the all-encompassing vision to raise virtuous citizens. Paul employs a word loaded with scriptural weight and Greek culture, background, and philosophy to exhort fathers to bring a true vision of the good life in the shaping and development of their children. We are to bring up our children where they understand the world correctly, know who they are in it, and move forward by faith to conduct themselves accordingly.
3. See David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), 107; Kenneth Ortiz, “What is Paideia? Why Should Christian Care?,” Theology for the Rest of Us (January 1, 2023); Jonathon Woodyard, “Paideia and Counter-Paideia,” (Bethlehem College and Seminary: November 2, 2022), timestamp 4:34; “What is Paideia?,” (Association of Classical Christian Schools); Joe Rigney, “Christian Parents, Know What You Are Up Against,” (World: June 6, 2024); Doug Wilson, The Paideia of God (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1999), 11.
Does that mean you make a practice of family worship (Deut. 6:4–9)? Yes. Does that mean you bring painful consequences into your child’s life that he might be trained by them (Heb. 12:5–11)? Yes. Does that mean you set the standard in your home that your child is to honor and obey you (Eph.6:1–3)? Yes. Does that mean you prioritize the weekly gathering of the local church to join in worship together as a family (Heb. 10:24–25)? Yes.
But it means much more than that. It means you are laboring to train your child to see and interact with all things under the lordship of Christ. It means you equip them to praise that which is praiseworthy, to esteem what is good, to value what is true, and to delight in what is beautiful. It means you shape them to love virtue and hate vice. It means you say the same thing 10,000 times so your children know in their bones that this is our Father’s world and that all art, music, math, creatures, sex, poetry, cells, sport, science, drink, law, vistas, weather, emotion, food, work, suffering, money, aspirations—that we engage with all of it in relation to the Lord Jesus who is preeminent over all (Col. 1:15–18).
The Focus of Baptistic Fatherhood
Too often, however, reformed baptist couples have a baby and start spinning about what they are supposed to do with this child. They grapple with all the great things the Bible says about children and feel as though they have to abandon their reformed baptist convictions and go sprinkle water on their babies in order to live out this aspirational vision for Christian parenting.
But such a reaction is not necessary. There is no incongruity between being reformed baptist and a faithful Christian father. In fact, I think such convictions advance our faithfulness. There was a decisive focus on children in the Old Covenant because of the promise of being a populous nation from whom the Son of the Woman would come (Gen. 3:15, 12:1–3). Now that the Son has come, covenant members are not born into the covenant community, they are reborn into it (John 1:12–13; 3:1–8).
Our progressive covenantalism gives shape to our understanding of the Church and thus of our children. The Church is comprised of those who are members of the “New Covenant.” It is that covenant anticipated in Jeremiah 31:31–34, where the covenant members are those who have the law of God written on their hearts and savingly “know the Lord.” Or in Ezekiel 36:22–28, God’s restored people will be those who are indwelt by the Spirit and have been given a new heart. It is this New Covenant that Jesus inaugurated and accomplished through his death and resurrection (1 Cor. 11:23–26).
David Schrock concisely emphasizes this when he writes,
[T]he children of God are not born into covenant families by their earthly birth. Rather, they are born again into the family of God by their new birth (John 1:12–13). Practically, this means that unbelieving children of Christian parents should not be baptized, invited to the Lord’s Supper, added to the membership, or treated as a fellow member of the covenant. Instead, members of the church should only be comprised of those who are truly children of God, as evidenced by their repentance and faith (1 John 5:4–5).
This baptistic understanding of the nature of the covenants and the community formed by them brings our fathering into sharper focus. The charge God the Father graciously gives to a father with the gift of a child is the call to labor in the gospel ministry in the life of that child. It is the joyful mission of dads to leverage breakfasts and bedtimes, football and films to train and shape and bring up any and all children in the paideia of the Lord. And when the local church discerns that child has credibly repented and believed, all the rights and privileges of membership are graciously given for the good of his soul.
The Focus of Reformed Baptistic Fatherhood
That baptistic understanding of the unfolding revelation of Scripture dovetails with our reformed convictions. I particularly have in mind here the Bible’s teaching on sin and salvation. All people are sinful all the way through (Gen. 6:5, 8:21; 1 Kgs. 8:46; Prov. 15:26; Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 1:21, 3:23, 5:12–21, 8:20; 1 Cor. 15:22; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:1–3). And God is sovereign in salvation, from election all the way to glorification (Eph. 1:4–5; John 17:6–9; Acts 13:48; Eph. 2:4–10; Rom. 5:9, 8:29–30; 1 Thess. 1:10). While it appears that the Lord does often work his salvation through the means of Christian parents, he does not do so as a covenanted guarantee. We do well to remember that Eli’s physical and spiritual dim-sightedness (1 Sam. 3:2–3) resulted in his failure to bring up his boys in the discipline and instruction of the LORD—though priests, they were worthless men (1 Sam. 2:12, 3:13). But we do well also to remember that the sons of God-fearing Samuel were no better (1 Sam. 8:1–3). According to his own sovereign purposes, the Lord may determine to not work salvation in the children of faithful parents (Rom. 9:6–18).
That means our children—yes, even children of Christian parents—are sinners. Apart from saving faith in Christ, our children have no hope of salvation. And until they repent, believe, and then are baptized, they are not members of the covenant community.
Rather than undercutting or discouraging our efforts as faithful fathers, this focuses our parenting. We are not desirous of any semblance of mere behavior modification or presumption of salvation. Rather, our focus is on the steady gospel witness we hold out to our children day after day. Children of Christians are beneficiaries of a great grace of God, being given by God into our homes that they may be under such steady influence and proclamation of the gospel (1 Cor. 7:14). But they are sinners needing the greatest grace of God, being redeemed through the blood of Christ (Eph. 1:3–10).
Withholding the grace of baptism is no more a detriment to our children than any other unbeliever who has benefited from the varied means of grace but is as of yet not giving discernible evidence of saving faith. We respond the same to both: we pray, we teach what is true, we apply the gospel, we share from God’s Word, we call to repentance and faith. And we look with hope to the God who raises the dead to bring new life.
Christian, you can have children who obey you immediately, completely, and joyfully that are on their way to Hell. Such obedience is not your ultimate goal—your children’s embrace of Christ is. This is the kind of grass we long and pray for. I would much rather have my children obey slowly, imperfectly, and begrudgingly and love Christ than to be perfectly obedient outwardly and hate Christ in their heart (cf. Matt. 21:28–32). Does the Lord require them to honor and obey their parents? Yes, of course. And if the Lord wills and if he gives his grace, then they will grow in being sanctified in this. The goal of our parenting is for God to be glorified in our children through the gospel. This is the reformed baptist distinctiveness that advances the paideia of the Lord.
An Aspirational Vision
This all-encompassing vision for bringing up your child that she might repent and believe on Christ and see all things as they truly are has ramifications on what church you are a member of, how you go about schooling, who your family spends time with, what friends your children have, how you go about summer and vacation, what sports teams your child will play on, what books your children read, who the influential leaders and mentors are in your child’s life, how technology is used, and on and on and on.
Fortunately, you don’t have to have all this figured out before you become a parent. Children develop, and so do parents. Isn’t it a grace to have a nine-month window to prepare for the birth of your child? And a five year window to practice good, healthy family rhythms before starting school? And seven years of establishing a foundation (roughly ages 5–12)? And three years of making connections to so many aspects of life (ages 12–15)? And three years of refining how ideas and beauty come together (ages 15–18)? You don’t have to do it all at once.
And you’ll mess up. You’ll sin. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll repent and seek forgiveness. And it will be given. Because there is grace for people—for parents—like you. And there is grace for people like your children, too. So, dads, grab the cargo shorts and gym socks and get after the work of the Lord, keeping your eyes gladly on your side of the fence. That grass won’t water itself.
