The Father's Position and
Responsibilities in the Home

True Definition of Husband — The home is an institution of God. He designed that the family circle, father, mother, and children, should exist in this world as a united family. The father is to act as priest in his own house. He is the “house-band” and what his influence will be in the home will be determined by his knowledge of the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

The work of making home happy does not rest upon the mother alone. Fathers have an important part to act. The husband is the house-band of the home treasures, binding by his strong, earnest, devoted affection the members of the household together in the strongest bonds of union.

His name, “house-band,” is the true definition of husband and few fathers realize their responsibility.

The Head of the Family — The husband and father is the head of the household. The wife rightly looks to him for love and sympathy and for aid in the training of the children. The children are his as well as hers, and he is to be equally interested in their welfare. The children look to the father for support and guidance; he needs to have a right conception of life and of the influences and associations that should surround his family. Above all, he should be controlled by the love and fear of God and by the teaching of His word, that he may guide the feet of his children in the right direction.

The father should do his part toward making the home happy. Whatever his cares and business perplexities, they should not be permitted to overshadow his family.

The Lawmaker and Priest — All members of the family center in the father. He is the lawmaker, illustrating in his own manly bearing the sterner virtues: energy, integrity, honesty, patience, courage, diligence, and practical usefulness. The father is in one sense the priest of the household, laying upon the altar of God the morning and evening sacrifice. The wife and children should be encouraged to unite in this offering and also to engage in the song of praise. Morning and evening the father, as priest of the household, should confess to God the sins committed by himself and his children through the day. Those sins which have come to his knowledge and also those which are secret, of which God’s eye alone has seen, should be confessed. This rule of action, zealously carried out by the father when he is present or by the mother when he is absent, will result in blessings to the family.

The father represents the divine Lawgiver in his family. He is a laborer together with God, carrying out the gracious designs of God and establishing in his children upright principles, enabling them to form pure and virtuous characters, because he has preoccupied the soul with that which will enable his children to render obedience not only to their earthly parent but also to their heavenly Father.

The father must not betray his sacred trust. He must not, on any point, yield up his parental authority.

To Walk With God — The father will bind his children to the throne of God by living faith. Distrusting his own strength, he hangs his helpless soul on Jesus and takes hold of the strength of the Most High. Husbands, pray at home with your family, night and morning; pray earnestly in your closet; and while engaged in your daily labor, lift up the soul to God in prayer. It was thus that Enoch walked with God. The silent, fervent prayer of the soul will rise like holy incense to the throne of grace and will be as acceptable to God as if offered in the sanctuary. To all who thus seek Him, Christ becomes a present help in time of need. They will be strong in the day of trial.

The Faith of Jesus — God desires the fathers to have the faith of Jesus, to live that faith so that they can lead the family well. True faith must be established by the principles of God’s word. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12)

Christ is coming the second time to receive those who rest in the faith of loving God with all their heart, mind, and soul, and their neighbor as themselves. The first four of the Ten Commandments have to do with love toward God and His Son. The second six commandments have to do with love toward our fellow man. Jesus said, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19)

Do you know that many have been taught in their churches to break one of the commandments that God and His Son instituted for the benefit of humanity? The Father was beside His Son as Jesus proclaimed the holy Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai.

Has the preacher in your church told you it is all right to steal? No, of course not. Has he said to you go out and kill, commit adultery, covet your neighbor’s wife, lie, and hate your father or mother? If he did you surely would stop going to his church!

What if he taught it was good to have other gods, worship graven images, and use God’s name in vain? It would be obvious he was not a man of God. But more than likely he teaches you to break the fourth commandment, and without studying for yourself you blindly follow his teaching as if he told you to have an affair with your friend’s wife! Please wake up before it’s too late! The evidence he received is from man, “the man of sin.” “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4)

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” (Daniel 7:25)

The Fourth Commandment — Let us examine God’s word on this matter. In Genesis we read: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Genesis 2:1-3)

Long before there was a Jew, God and His Son instituted the seventh-day Sabbath. “For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.” (Hebrews 4:4)

Jesus Christ instructs us concerning the Sabbath. “And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27, 28) If Christ is the Lord of the seventh-day Sabbath, then who is lord of Sunday? Bible prophecy and history tell us it can be none other than “the man of sin,” the papacy.

The Sabbath is a Sign — Fathers must realize that God uses the seventh-day Sabbath as a sign to show who His people are. He says: “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.” (Ezekiel 20:12) “And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.” (Ezekiel 20:20)

Even before the Ten Commandments were given, God was teaching His people how to keep the Sabbath. “And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning.” (Exodus 16:22, 23) The fourth commandment says:

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:8-11).

Jesus taught that God’s people will keep the seventh-day Sabbath at the end of time. “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:” (Matthew 24:20) “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12) “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22:14)

God’s people will always keep the seventh-day Sabbath throughout eternity. “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 66:22, 23)