In Psalm 127:3 we are reminded that children are a reward to parents from the Lord. Children are given to us by God to pass on the knowledge and testimony of all God has shown, taught, and commanded believers to do. Children will learn many things, but Christian parents should teach them what God wants them to know. As the Puritan John Flavel wrote, "If you neglect to instruct [children] in the way of holiness, will the devil neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness? No; if you will not teach them to pray, he will to curse, swear, and lie. If ground be uncultivated, weeds will spring."[1] Many people are involved in instructing children— teachers, extended family, grandparents, pastors, and even VBS leaders—but fathers are singled out and spoken to directly from God’s Word. They are the central figures in family discipleship. That truth is communicated in multiple passages of Scripture. From those passages, we can see that fathers have the greatest responsibility for discipling their children.
Discipleship is at the heart of what Christ has called every believer to do. Just before His ascension into heaven, Jesus gave us the Great Commission:
18 Jesus came near and said to them, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [2]
The emphasis in the passage is to go and make disciples. The main verb is mathēteusate, which translates as "make disciples."[3] Although Jesus was speaking directly to His own disciples, Christians throughout history have rightly understood this command to be for all believers. One interesting aspect of Jesus’ ministry shows the intentionality of how Jesus made disciples. He used public teaching, small meetings, healings, and debates, but throughout his earthly ministry, He focused on personal discipleship. Jesus spent most of His ministry in close relationship with His disciples. His goal was not just to reach those men but also to train them to reach others who would do likewise. Robert Coleman wrote about the focus of Jesus’ ministry: "Really it is a question of which generation we are living for."[4] If Jesus’ goal was ultimately to reach the next generations, then the goal of fathers should be no different. Fathers should teach and disciple their children to reach their children and future generations to come.
When Jesus gave us the Great Commission, He did not tell us to make disciples in certain places—He commanded us to make disciples wherever we were. In a study by LifeWay, only 24 percent of parents who attended religious services regularly agreed that successful parenting is when their child is godly or has faith in God (emphasis added).[5] This is a gallant goal, but it falls short of Christ’s command in Matthew 28:18–20 to baptize and teach "all that I have commanded you." From His command, we see the importance of not making disciples just of neighbors or those in other countries but also of our own children. A careful reading of the Scriptures will show that discipleship should occur in many different places, including in our own homes. Therefore, just as all believers are called to make disciples, all Christian parents are called to evangelize and disciple their children. This calling involves both the father and the mother. Scripture does not devalue motherhood or a mother’s role in the life of her child, but there is a special emphasis placed upon the spiritual leadership, nurturing, and training of children by fathers. This emphasis can be seen early in the Old Testament in the book of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy is the last book of the Torah. The name of the book comes from the Latin Vulgate and means "second law."[6] It is referred to as the second law because in it God re-emphasized the Law from the book of Exodus. Since the generation that had been given the Law did not trust the Lord to take them to the promised land, God made sure the next generation knew the Law. It was a very gracious act of God to remind them of His Law—He intervened and did what their forefathers did not do, namely teach them God’s Law. Moses was serving as the mouthpiece to God’s people and only relaying the message that had been given to him.[7] The sequence connecting chapters 5 and 6 may be summed up in this way: "God gave me all this command (5:31) . . . so be careful to do all that God has commanded you (5:32–33) . . . And this is it (6:1–3)!"[8] Once we come to chapter 6, we see glimpses of why references to the "second law" are used. God had been preparing His chosen people to assume possession of the promised land, and as God did that, He reiterated to this current generation what He had told the previous generation—their forefathers. Verses 4–9 give us the "Shema," which is "the expression of the essence of all of God’s person and purposes in sixteen words of Hebrew text."[9] These were powerful words given by a powerful God for a powerful purpose. One scholar writes, "Judaism and Christianity agree in designating this passage . . . the most important text in the whole of the Old Testament."[10]
Verse 4’s beginning words "Hear, O Israel" call for God’s people to not only listen to Him but to also obey Him. The Hebrew word for hear (שָׁמַע) appears 37 times in Deuteronomy and means "a way of life."[11] We can see clearly in the previous verse that this was God’s intention when he wrote, "Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it," (Deuteronomy 6:3). And as we keep looking back to verse 2, we see how the intention expressed leading into the Shema is for "you, your son, and your grandson."[12] So, when Moses shared the command of God to the people, he was calling them to pay close attention to what he (Moses) told them.[13] This is a command to be taught to the next generation and then for that generation to teach it to the generation after them; fathers today should do the same.
As we continue to look at verse 4, we see that God called out to the Israelites and declared some significant truths with a few key words, including our and one. First, when God said "our," He was communicating there was a relationship between Himself and Israel. This relationship was a reference to the covenant that was established by God with His people, beginning with Abraham. Even though God disciplined Israel by making them wander in the desert for 40 years, the covenant between Israel and God remained. And since the covenant remained, the relationship remained. The second key word in verse 4 is one. By God referring to Himself as one, He was showing a unity that exists within the triune God, and through this unity we can have a glimpse that the same God who exists in a trinitarian relationship also has a relationship with Israel. As we see these characteristics of God and how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another, it helps us see how we are to relate to one another as people, especially members of the same family. God gives this information to us, and we are to pass that information to others. In the same way, just as God relates to Himself, we are to relate to our own family in a harmonious way—this includes a parent with a child. As Ware writes, "In the Trinity, the various parts played by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit lead to the beauty and unity of harmony, and this is the model we should emulate in our relationships."[14]
In verse 5 we see the Law summed up in one brief sentence: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5). This is also the verse quoted by Jesus in Matthew 22:36–40 when religious leaders asked Him which law was the greatest: "Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?" He said to them, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands."
The command in Deuteronomy is central because it is renewing the covenant with God. And because of all God has done for the Israelites in their salvation, we are given "the only appropriate attitude to his God is that of love."[15] We see repetition in terminology from the covenant established with Israel. This terminology is similar not only to covenantal language but also to father/son language.[16] One of the best examples of someone loving another can be seen in the love a parent has for his or her child. God is referred to as Father in the Lord’s Prayer. And in Hebrews 12 God is likened to human fathers who love and discipline their sons. The author of Hebrews makes the connection that just as God loves and disciplines His "children," our human fathers do the same thing with their children. This comparison is one example of how we should view the way our relationship with our heavenly Father mirrors the relationship with our earthly fathers.
In the Shema, it seems fitting to view this command as a father loving his children. God Himself is doing the same, teaching His words to His children. As this verse tells us to love God, a natural outpouring of that love of God is to obey God: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). It is not logical to say we love our authority and then to disobey that same authority. So, seeing how God loves His children gives us a picture of a father loving his child, and one of the best ways a father can love his child is to love God. Then one of the most effective ways to show that love for God is to obey God by teaching children about the person the father loves most, God.
Another of the key words in verse 5 is your. This word your shows a relational aspect to obedience to God. Not only should Israel obey God as a whole, but for that to occur, the individual themselves must obey God. This individual obedience is important as we move through the Shema, since loving God is shown by our individual obedience to God, and our obedience to God is shown in the teaching of our own children. The command is about "piety and lifestyle."[17] Piety is the "godly practices, spiritual habits or experiential religion" someone lives out.[18] Verse 5 tells about knowing God in a personal way or having a relationship with God. From that relationship, there will be a Holy Spirit enabled desire to do what God wants us to do. Our lifestyle will now be characterized by their heart-felt desire to follow the commands and direction God wants from us, instead of our own desires that previously led us. Because of this change our heart, one of those new desires will be for those people close to us to follow the commands and desires of God as well.
God is clear in verse 6 when He says "these words," which encompasses all the words Moses is passing on to the Israelites. This also will remind the readers about the first verse of the book. One commentary describes the phrase as "the full corpus of the covenant text."[19] As we continue to see, God is the one who has given the commandments. The words "I give you" represent a gift from a father to his children. God desires for His hearers to keep His commands "in their heart." This motivation from the heart means they are to be remembered and lived out. People who have something in their hearts would think about these things and make them important to them in their lives. It is interesting to point out that God specifically mentions their hearts and not their minds. Mentioning their hearts focuses on their consciousness. We may think of the heart as the center of a person, especially the emotional side of things, but in Hebrew times, the heart was more about the center of the rational side.[20] To put it another way, their obedience would be "a response based upon understanding," not some formulaic way of earning God’s favor.[21] That understanding is in reference to their heart, which shows the way we describe the heart in our current day but not the way Moses’ hearers would have thought of it. They would not have thought of the heart as feelings; it was more encompassing than that. As they continued to grow in their understanding of God, the natural overflow of that understanding would be to apply those things in their own lives and tell others. We see this overflow in other books of the Old Testament as well. One example is found in Jeremiah: "The commandments are to be upon your heart; that is, the people are to meditate upon them to the point that the law is internalized, exactly as Jeremiah saw so clearly when he spoke of a ‘new covenant’ in which Yahweh declares that ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts’ (Jeremiah 31:31–33)."[22] A contextual view of this passage shows the progression this way: "There is a movement from the private heart of the individual, outward via the family in the home, to the public realm of society at the gate."[23] It starts with individuals when God miraculously changes their own heart. Now that their heart is changed, they desire to follow God’s commands, such as the Shema, which impacts the ones in their own home—their spouse, and their children. Then the ones impacted in the home, including the father, begin to impact those outside their home. This focus is "a forceful sequence of imperatives moves from the private ‘heart’ outward to the public realm of ‘gate.’"[24] We would refer to this as spiritual multiplication. Equipping believers closest to you and then sending them out to reach others follows a similar pattern given with the Great Commission in Acts 1:8. It begins with an emphasis on the nearest area, Jerusalem, and it eventually spreads out to the "remotest parts of the earth."
In verse 7, the first word of the verse in the NIV is impress. The ESV translates it as "teach them diligently." This word gives us the picture of engraving words on rock, and "the image is that of the engraver of a monument who takes hammer and chisel in hand and with painstaking care etches a text into the face of a solid slab of granite."[25] This image gives us some details of how tedious this work can be, how much care is to be taken in following this command, and the impact a father has on the lessons he passes on to his children. Whereas, fathers are always teaching, the lessons can be negative as well. The goal is to pass on the commands from the Lord to their children, teaching them in such a way they will remember the words of God and recall them even in their old age. Then when they have their own children, they can do the same thing their parents have done and pass God’s commands on to the next generation. The goal, however, is not only to pass on a knowledge of the Law of Moses but also to help create a sincere love for God.
The teaching takes place when we are at home and when we are out of our home. The first part of this verse focuses on the activities we do as a family. Sitting in our home would signify resting, eating, or some other type of inactivity with the family, while activity would signify things like walking, working in the yard, or cleaning the house. The activities can range from going to church, eating at a restaurant, or even relaxing on vacation. The application of this could be any activity outside the home where a father’s children are with him.
The last part of verse 7 talks about time; "lying down" would be the end of the day and "get up" refers to the morning. No matter what is going on in the home or outside the home, as parents, we are commanded to pass on to or impress the words of God on our children. The CSB says, "repeat them to your children," communicating the idea of consistency. For the teaching of our children to be consistent, it is very helpful to teach in different aspects of life. The command, and the passing on of God’s commands, is to "permeate every sphere of the life of man."[26] They are to be all encompassing for us to pass on these words to our children. Teaching our children could take place in a formal setting, such as a family devotion, or an informal setting, such as a trip to the grocery store. No aspect of our lives, nor the lives of our children, are to be separated from the Word of God.
These words, promises, and commands begin in the Old Testament and continue into the New Testament. And not only that, but they also continue today. All parents, especially fathers, have been commanded by God to disciple their children. By doing this, parents are confronted with their own areas of their lives that need God’s grace. And in God’s grace is where parents should stay. There are no perfect parents or perfect children—only a perfect God. He loves our children more than we do, so who better to point them to than Him.
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[1] Elliot Ritzema and Elizabeth Vince, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Mt 28:18–20.
[3]Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 431.
[4] Robert Coleman, Masterplan of Evangelism. (Ashville, NC: Revell, 1994), 35.
[5] Jana Magruder, Nothing Less. (___Lifeway Christian Resources, 2017), __.
[6] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 21.
[7] Edward J. Woods, Deuteronomy, InterVarsity Press, 2008. ProQuest eBook Central.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 162.
[10] Gerald Eddie Gerbrandt, Deuteronomy, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Herald Press, 2015), 105.
[11] Timothy A. Gabrielson, "Obedience," ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
[12] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Dt 6:2.
[13] Edward J. Woods, Deuteronomy. Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, V. 5. (Downers Grove, IL., Inter-Varsity Press, 2011).
[14] Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance. Crossway, 2005; Wheaton IL., 136.
[15] Anthony Phillips, Deuteronomy, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 55.
[16] D. J. McCarthy, CBQ 27 (1965), pp. 144–47. See also J. W. McKay, "Man’s Love for God in Deuteronomy," VT 22 (1972), pp. 426–435.
[17] McConville, J. G. Deuteronomy. Apollos Old Testament Commentary, 5. (Leicester, England: Apollos, 2002), 141.
[18] Kelly M. Kapic and Wesley Vander Lugt, Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 87.
[19] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 167
[20] Wolff. Anthropology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press, 1517 Media, 48. ISBN 080061500X
[21] Peter Craigie, Book of Deuteronomy, NICOT. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
[22] Duane L. Christensen, Deuteronomy, vol. 1-11, Word Biblical Commentary, (Dallas: Word Books, 1991), 144.
[23] Edward J. Woods, Deuteronomy, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2011), 137.
[24] Richard Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 91.
[25] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 167.
[26] Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy. NICOT, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976).