Hello and thank you for listening to Ask Pastor John with longtime author and pastor John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. John Piper is a pastor, he is a theologian, a preacher, an author, and he is a husband and a dad and a grandfather. And today's question is one about being a husband and a dad, specifically a dad to little ones.

The question comes from a perplexed young wife and mom named Mary. "Dear Pastor John, my husband and I recently had our first child, a beautiful baby girl. She is now seven weeks old. My husband, however, doesn't seem to want to help very much with her. He never changes diapers and I have to urge him even to hold her.

He claims that since he works outside of the home, he shouldn't have to take care of her. What are your thoughts on this? What role should a Christian husband take in caring for little kids and their needs at home?" I think I can paint a faithful, biblical picture of the kinds of things a godly Christian husband should be inclined to do if he is submitted to Scripture and led by the Holy Spirit and trusting the promises of God.

But I don't mean to imply by this picture that I'm going to paint that every marriage will have the same proportion of activities spread out among a wife and a husband, but rather that these are the kinds of things a man will lean into if he loves Scripture, lives by the Spirit, draws strength from the promises of God.

And the reason I make that qualification is because if you have a woman who has six kids, a husband who has an eight-hour job, leaves at 8.30, comes home at 5.30, and is sitting most of the day and she's managing six kids, that's going to look different when he comes home maybe than if they have one kid and she stays at home and he works 12 hours of labor, say in construction all day, and he comes home at 8.

It's just going to look different. But in either of those cases, what I'm about to paint I think is true. First, a godly husband will feel a very special responsibility under God to love his wife and children by leading and providing and protecting his wife and his children. And the reason I say that is because I see all three of those things describing the kind of love that a husband is supposed to have in Ephesians 5, 25 to 33.

Number two, the nature of that love for his wife and children includes a self-denying sacrificial inclination to honor and nurture the relationships in his family. Paul says in Ephesians 5, 29, "No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church." And that applies primarily to the wife, but his children are by implication also his own flesh, profoundly his own flesh.

So there is built in to Christ-like manhood in marriage a God-given inclination to use strength for the sake of honoring and nurturing wife and children. Third, since Peter calls the wife the weaker vessel and infers from it not disrespect but greater honor from the husband, 1 Peter 3, 7, it follows that a Christian husband will seek to express or expand his strength to support his wife in her burdens rather than calling attention to his own weakness and weariness.

In other words, the strength of a man in his God-given manhood should incline him to go the extra mile in showing his strength in helping his wife with the children, including changing diapers with his big, strong arms. So she will want to go the extra mile as a unique helper fit for him.

This is a beautiful competition in the marriage where both are seeking to outdo one another in showing honor and serving. Fourth, Paul says in Ephesians 6, 4, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." The application is that fathers have a unique role in displaying the character of the Lord, Jesus, and the nature of God the Father to the children.

To be sure, mothers are crucial, essential in showing Christ and Christlikeness to the children. But the fatherhood of God and the lordship of Jesus is not revealed to us for nothing. Fathers have a unique role in showing their children what God the Father is like, and what we know is that God the Father helps the very hairs of our head.

As he numbers them, he gets down nitty gritty, takes one hair at a time, one, two, three, 3,002, 3,003, and he counts the hairs on our head, Matthew 10, 30. That's a picture of attentiveness and closeness and hands-on care. That's the picture in Matthew 10, 30 of our father.

He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust, Psalm 103, 13. He carries us when we're wearis, Isaiah 46, 4, when we're weak, the beginning of life and the end of life. He's a carrier of his children. He sings over us and rejoices to do us good, Zephaniah 3, 17.

He takes us into his own joy rather than into his gloominess, Matthew 25, 21. Welcome into the joy of your master. So these are all things that a father in his role, according to Ephesians 6, 4, will want to both teach and model for his children. Fifth, not only will a godly father want to show God the Father to his children in all these ways, but he will want to model for them the heart of Jesus.

When the disciples saw people bringing children to Jesus, they tried to stop them because they thought, "Oh, these children are not important," and Jesus rebuked them. And we read this in verse 15 in Luke 18, "Now they were bringing infants to him that he might touch them." Every father should perk up.

And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. You can think of all kinds of reasons why you might rebuke them. Don't you know Jesus is tired? Don't you know that's woman's work? Don't you know whatever? You know, there are a lot of reasons that a man might think of to say, "Children, you're just not important enough for me to get my hands on them." But Jesus called them to him, saying, "Let the children come to me and do not hinder them for to such belong the children of God." These children are like the kind of people that God inclines toward.

Jesus inclined toward children, not away. In fact, he said, I think this is one of the most astonishing things he ever said, I used to quote it for our nursery workers at church in Bethlehem, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me." I mean, that's just staggering.

It says if you receive a child in the name of Jesus, you don't just receive the child, and you don't just receive Jesus, you receive God Almighty, the creator of the universe. That's just staggering. I doubt that any of us can quite fathom what receiving the creator of the universe in receiving a child involves, but that's what it says.

And a husband that wants to be like Jesus and receive Jesus and receive God the Father will be very attentive to caring for, receiving, playing with, nurturing his children. And finally, a Christian father will want to have the heart of the apostles toward his children and show them how to relate to others from the earliest months of their lives.

And here's what Paul said his heart was toward the Thessalonians. This is 1 Thessalonians 2.6. "We did not seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles, we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very precious to us." Now, if Paul spoke this way as a father in the faith toward his converts, how much more would a Christian father want to treat his children this way and want his children to learn by the Father's example, even as infants—they pick up so much from the very beginning—even as infants how a godly man loves.

So to this man who says, "Since he works outside the home, he shouldn't have to take care of his child," this man's mind and heart need a biblical Holy Spirit makeover, so that he shifts from the mindset of "have to" to "get to." There are few higher callings than to be a god displaying, Christ displaying, apostolic love displaying, love, love, love displaying, manhood displaying, father to his own children.

It's a "get to," not a "have to." Amen. Yeah, that's a very good correlation here with the priority of Jesus to little children. Thank you for that. May we husbands pour our lives out to serve our kids and to serve our wives in joyful sacrifice. Thanks for listening. To listen to our past episodes or to send us a question of your own, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn, and there you can find one of my all-time favorite episodes to dads.

It's episode number 255, "Dad's Role in Homemaking." Check it out, episode number 255, "Dad's Role in Homemaking," one of my favorite episodes ever. And Wednesday we return with a question about Romans 9, 22-23. It's a key text. It's one we've talked about a lot on this podcast, and there's still yet a lot of questions to be answered from Romans 9, verses 22-23.

So much of our theology hangs on how we understand these verses. How and why is God preparing vessels of destruction and vessels of mercy for salvation? It's a weighty text, it's sobering, but it's gloriously God-centered. And we're gonna press into that next time. I'm your host Tony Renke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

See you then. 1. Romans 9:23-24 1. Romans 9:23-24 2. Romans 9:23-24 3. Romans 9:23-24 4.