“Nice win! All right, we’re done for the night,” I said to my 6-year-old son. “Time to put the cards away.”
“Ugh, I wanted to play another game!” he said, pouting.
“Sorry bud, it’s already a little past bedtime. We need to get you to sleep.”
Out burst an emphatic “no!” accompanied by angry crocodile tears. “I’m not done playing!”
“I love playing with you too! But remember: I said we could only play one round before bed. Time to pack it up.”
My diplomatic words did little to soothe my son’s pain. Genuinely upset, he let his angry tears flow all the more. He was tired. He was disappointed. He was exasperated.
Uh oh, I thought to myself, remembering Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.” Is this what Paul had in mind?
After all, exasperate means “provoke to anger.” The King James Version even famously translated this passage as “provoke not your children to wrath”—and that is exactly what I was doing by setting and holding a boundary for my son. In our highly therapeutic age, we’re more tempted than ever to interpret someone else’s distress as evidence of our own wrongdoing.
Paul gives a similar command in Colossians 3:21: “Do not embitter your children.” But as anyone who’s recently interacted with any toddlers, most kids, or some teens can attest, these can feel like impossible commands.
So what did Paul have in view when he gave these instructions to fathers?
As a relatively new dad myself—my kids are 6 and 4—I’ve wrestled with these texts and Paul’s heart behind them. What I’ve concluded is that Paul has three things in view: (1) remember the goal of fatherhood, (2) recognize that correction must be the capstone—not the foundation—of fathering, and (3) allow the means and methods of God’s fatherhood to trickle down into your own fathering.
In Colossians 3:21, Paul warns that when dads parent provocatively, the kids “will become discouraged.” Discouragement is the shriveling of the soul, self, and spirit. Fathers have the capacity to squelch the image of God in their kids, making them feeble, insecure, and ignorant. A father has the power to cause a spirited child to lose his or her spark, to make a courageous child a coward.
This is not the goal. Fatherhood is not meant to be like breaking a wild horse, promoting subservience and dutiful compliance. A good father should be the wind in his children’s sails.
That’s hard to do if you’re focusing on taming your children, but it’s a natural result of doing what Paul describes in the second half of Ephesians 6:4: “Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” The root of the Greek word translated as “bring up”—ektrephō—could also be translated as “to feed” or “to nourish,” and is shepherding language (as it appears in Gen. 47:17 in the Septuagint). We want our children to grow, to be well-fed, and to be “strong and courageous” (Josh. 1:9). This not merely physical but emotional and spiritual as well.
I used to long for a model that would help me evaluate myself, with all my baggage, as a father: some kind of standard I could be graded on. After all, it’s easy to feel that you’re doing a good job as a dad if you compare yourself to the wrong people. And it’s easy to feel like a huge loser if you compare yourself to the right people.
I don’t want to feel simply good or bad; I want to deal with reality. I want to compare myself to God the Father, admit I fall short of his glory, be assured of grace, and then labor to do the best job I can for the well-being of my kids, not the well-being of my self-esteem.
When I was writing my book Authentic Masculinity, I developed the ABCs of fatherhood: affection, blessing, and correction. It’s a three-tiered pyramid, with affection as the foundation and correction as the capstone.
Affection is about love, warmth, attachment, and connection. When we endeavor to bring our kids up “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), we don’t want to merely tell them that the Father loves them. We want to model how the Father loves them: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us!” (1 John 3:1). Part of how they’ll see God’s love is through the ways in which we love them.
I get an A in affection when I can confidently say, “I love my kids and—equally important—they feel loved by me. As Daniel Siegel puts it in The Power of Showing Up, they are ‘safe, seen, soothed, and secure.’ My affections are rightly ordered. My kids are properly prioritized. I enjoy them, and they enjoy me. They can sense my delight in them.”
Blessing is about investment, strategy, and development. Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (ESV). This is not less than material investment—it’s far more. When Jacob blessed his sons at the end of his life, he spoke words of life that revealed how deeply he knew them as individuals. He gave “each the blessing appropriate to him” (Gen. 49:28).
I get an A in blessing when I can confidently say this: “I’m proactively pouring into my children. My children are well-fed, in every sense. I’m considering them and their future physically, spiritually, financially, relationally, and romantically. I’m anticipating their needs both in the short-term and the long-term. I’m consistently present and creatively planning.”
Correction is about conflict, discipline, and feedback. Nobody likes this part, but it’s an important part of effective fathering. As Proverbs 13:24 reminds us, “Whoever spares the rod hates their children.” Discipline is inherently uncomfortable, which is why fathers may abdicate their God-given responsibility.
I know I’m getting an A in correction when I can confidently say the following: “I’m setting and holding boundaries and operating with integrity. My yes is yes and my no is no. I’m consistent and calm when addressing bad attitudes or behavior, delivering age-appropriate consequences that serve as teachers. I’m disciplining not punitively but formatively, according to my child’s maturity, temperament, and physical capacity.”
In my experience, fathers embitter and exasperate their children when they treat correction as the foundation of parenting. That’s wrong. The foundation is affection rooted in delight that faithfully images the love and character of our Father in heaven. Cold and distant drill sergeants who demand obeisance will not connect with their children as the Lord wants.
The modus operandi of fatherhood in the first century was aloof, belittling, and controlling. In these passages, Paul is laying out a countercultural vision for the household of God.
But this new vision is not just about actions. It’s also about our internal disposition toward God. We naturally relate to our children how we imagine the Lord relates to us. When we perceive him as aloof and demanding, our kids will feel the trickle-down effects of that relational reality. When we perceive him as silent and distant, our kids will have dads who are inclined to the silent treatment and quiet rage.
If we want to mature as fathers, our first step is to meditate on how our heavenly Father showers us with affection, blessing, and correction. This is the heart of Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17:23—that we would see that the Father loves us “even as” he loved Jesus.
The Father loves you as he loves the Son!
What a delight it is to be delighted in by the Father. To be blessed by him and disciplined by him is a privilege only grace can explain. May our children receive our fatherhood with the same sense of joy.
Seth Troutt is a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in Arizona and is the author of Authentic Masculinity. Seth and his wife, Taylor, have two young children.
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