“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
In our last post, I recalled lessons from my heavenly Father that I had learned from my earthy father. Human familial relationships have spiritual counterparts. This is clear from Scripture. God is called “Father” and we are called His “children.” The eternal “Son,” who became incarnate, is our called our “brother.” Christ is the “bridegroom” and the church (the collective people of God) is His “bride.” These correlations are sometimes explained as God utilizing human relationships as convenient metaphors for helping us understand these spiritual realities. This is backwards. We are made in God’s image. He deliberately designed these human relationships as a reflection of our relationship with Him. Of course, as with any image, the reality is far more multifaceted than a mere reflection can portray. However, there remains a significant correlation between the subject and the image. This is the sense in which the Lord designed earthly, human relationships. These familial relationships were created to reflect something of our relationship to our Triune God. These earthly, human relationships are what we might call, “representational relationships.”
Based upon this understanding, human beings are intended to learn something of the heavenly Father from their earthly fathers. Our earthly fathers are meant to be a model or paradigm for understanding the greater reality of a relationship with our heavenly Father. This particular means of instruction is by “virtue of design.” An earthly father teaches his children about God simply by being their father. Of course, because of sin, no father does this perfectly. In fact, there are many earthly fathers that represent God very poorly indeed.
An earthly father cannot escape this responsibility. He is, in a sense, an ambassador of fatherhood. The function of an ambassador is to represent another, whether it be a dignitary or a nation. He does not have the luxury of not representing. It is inherent in his role. Everything he does, good or bad, true or false, is a reflection on the one he represents. His task is to represent faithfully. It is clear that many fathers are unfaithful representatives of God. In fact, they often communicate falsehoods about the heavenly Father through how they raise their children. But they remain representatives of God by virtue of design. This is true of all fathers. It is not a question of whether fathers are teaching their children. The question is what they are teaching them.
The function of an ambassador is to represent another, whether it be a dignitary or a nation. He does not have the luxury of not representing.
However, there is more to the story, especially where the community of faith concerned. Moses, speaking on behalf of God, provides the divine prescription for parental instruction within the context of His covenant people (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). For those who know God covenantally, parental responsibility is deliberate, explicit, and purposed. Not only are fathers to teach their children about the heavenly Father through their role as parents, they are commanded by God to actively and intentionally communicate the divine will and purpose to their offspring. While this is taught throughout Scripture (think especially of Proverbs), the passage in Deuteronomy is a good summary of this doctrine. This text is frequently quoted but its far-reaching implications are often overlooked.
In our next post, we will look closely at how the prescription for covenantal fatherly instruction found in Deuteronomy 6.
