Chapter 5

The Masculine Duty to Provide

Godly fathers consider it a masculine honor to provide for their wives' and children's needs. First, a godly father gives spiritual sustenance to his children. It is dad who should also be reading the Bible with his kids, praying with them, and answering their questions—not just mom, the church Sunday school teacher, or the youth pastor. Second, a godly father provides for the physical needs of his children. This point may seem obvious to some, but it is apparently lost in our culture, where children are the most likely people to live in poverty, and elementary schools now serve breakfast to children because many of them were not eating breakfast and were falling asleep in class as a result. My point is simply this: if you want to be a godly man who provides for his wife and children, you will need to out-work and out-earn other men and take to heart Paul's words from 1 Timothy 5:8: "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

Men are supposed to work and provide for their families. Before sin even entered the world, we read in Genesis 2:15, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it." Work is for a man an act of worship, just as his wife's work is worshipful for her. This does not mean that it is a sin for a wife to work when a couple is first married, as they are getting ready to begin their family, or for a wife to make money on the side as a secondary priority while remaining at home with the children, or even for her to work once the children are grown if the motives are pure and her primary duties are not neglected. Furthermore, the masculine duty to provide does not mean that under extenuating circumstances a wife does not need to work, such as if a husband is hospitalized with an illness or injury and is completely unable to work. As an aside, a wise husband also has savings, disability, and life insurance to provide for his family even in the direst of circumstances.

Nonetheless, there is no way anyone could read the Bible and wind up with the silly notion that both the husband and the wife are to be providers and that daycares or relatives are supposed to raise the children of a Christian couple. Furthermore, it is completely impossible to read the Bible and wind up with the inane idea that a Christian father can be a stay-at-home dad while mom goes to work. Anyone who thinks these things are acceptable is by definition worldly.

Practically speaking, making money to provide for your family is not the same thing as spending it wisely. Proverbs 28:25 says, "A greedy man stirs up strife." The greedy dad is the one with lots of toys and hobbies that take his free time and money away from the needs of his wife and children. While it is not a sin for a man to have nice things, it is a sin if he habitually gets nice things for himself before tithing to the Lord and being generous with his family as a demonstration of the gospel of grace.

Proverbs 19:14 goes even further by teaching that, "House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord." Again, wisdom lives from generation to generation, while folly lives from paycheck to paycheck and racks up credit cards without concern while driving around in a car with the bumper sticker that brags, "We're spending our children's inheritance."

Proverbs 13:22 goes further still: "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children." A wise father first cultivates himself, then cultivates a godly relationship with a wise woman, cultivates his children, and anticipates that his wisdom will be passed on to his grandchildren, who will love God and pursue life and ministry with ambition. Subsequently, a wise man begins investing for his grandchildren long before they are born, trusting by faith that they will need his college fund to further their wisdom and his tithe money to fund their ministry. In Ecclesiastes 10:19 Solomon ironically says that "money answers everything," and a godly father aspiring to be a godly grandfather knows what that verse means in this fallen world, where everything from a decent education to the startup funds for a church plant would ideally come, at least in part, from godly fathers and grandfathers.

In addition to spiritual and financial provision, a godly father also provides socially for his children by bringing them into a healthy church community. Since the father is the head of his home, he is wise to see the benefits of a wide social network of friends and family for his wife and children. One of Paul's favorite metaphors for the church in the New Testament is that Christians are a family by spiritual, rather than physical, birth. This web of relationships should support the father in his task of training and cultivating his children in the Lord.

Because of this, Proverbs teaches that a wise father selects his friends carefully. The alternate reading of Proverbs 12:26 in the ESV says, "The righteous chooses his friends carefully." Additionally, Proverbs 27:10 says, "Do not forsake your friend and your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away."

Friends who love God and live righteously are wonderful influences upon a child. Your children will benefit from playing with their children and seeing their marriages. A wise father will not tuck his children away to be hidden and uninvolved in the life of his church and friends, but rather integrate them into the church community, developing friendships with people of all ages, thereby reinforcing his instruction as they see the benefits of wisdom in the lives of many people.

One night while tucking my daughter Ashley into bed, I asked her, "What should a good daddy do?" Putting her finger on her chin to think, she said, "A daddy should make a lot of money, a daddy should read his Bible, a daddy should teach his kids, a daddy should love his kids, and a daddy should be silly and have lots of fun." It was a good list for her mere four years of age at the time. I was so impressed with her insight that I asked why she chose these items, and she told me that those were the things that she had seen daddies in our church do when she played with their children at their homes.

Lastly, as a father cultivates his child in these ways, he is intentionally setting for them a course of life that will continue into adulthood. Proverbs 22:6 explains it this way: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." This is not a promise, but rather a truism: Training a child in a God-ward direction sets for them a course of life. Sadly, the converse is also true: a foolish father sets his child on the path of folly, and many do not turn from it in repentance. Therefore, it is imperative for a wise father to get his child going in the right direction and by God's grace help them continue forward in wisdom and holiness.