Who Is a Father?

Let me start with a sentence that will unsettle some of us. All fathers are men with children; but not all men with children are fathers. The two are not the same thing at all, and the difference is the whole message.

The apostle John writes to a particular group he calls fathers, and he tells us plainly what sets them apart: “You have known Him who is from the beginning.” A father, in the truest sense, is someone who has come to know the One who was there before the beginning — the original Father of everyone.

And notice this: only someone who was before the beginning can actually be at the beginning; everyone else arrives after it. When you make God your beginning, when God is at the start of a thing, then no matter how rough it gets, He will see you to the end. God is not a God of abandoned projects. Everything that begins with God gets finished, because He is Author and Finisher.

A sire is not a father

A father is more than a sire. A sire is the man who gave the seed, the one who begot you biologically. Any healthy man can be a sire; give him the opportunity and he can father hundreds. But that does not make him a father in the sense that matters. So who is a father? John says it comes down to who you have known — the One with whom you have had deep, personal communion.

Look closely at the word desire. It is almost two words joined together: “de,” meaning from or of, and “sire.” Here, then, is a way to define a father: a father is someone who, as a result of your knowing them and being with them, creates the desires, the passions, the dreams and motivations that drive you and make you who you are. Your sire may be one man, and the man who forms your desires may be another — and that second man is your true father.

Turn it around and it defines a son as well. You are a son or daughter to someone if the things you long to do flow out of your connection with that person — if the actions you take, whether they are watching you or not, come from desires that were formed in you through your relationship with them. That last phrase is the test: whether they are there or not. A hired hand behaves when the master is present. A true son carries the father’s desires into the room even when the father has left it.

Jesus made exactly this point, and it stung His hearers. They insisted Abraham was their father, and then that God was their father. Jesus answered by pointing not to their bloodline but to their desires — “If God were your Father, you would love Me,” He told them, “for I proceeded forth and came from God.” The proof of who fathers you is not what you claim; it is what you love and what you want.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.

John 8:44 (NKJV)

In other words, your real father is revealed by the desires living in you. Which means He will be a father to no one who has not known the Father — and the one who has truly known the Father can become a father to anyone. That alone could end the message. But let me show you what this Father is actually like, from the story Jesus told in Luke 15.

He gave up his life for his sons

When the story of the prodigal opens, we meet a man with two sons who is, at that point, a sire but not yet a father. Left to themselves, neither son would do what was in the father’s heart. And that is the first thing we learn about God: though He has sired us all, He has not yet fathered us all — which is why He sent Jesus, so that we could truly call Him “our Father,” the source of all our best desires.

The first move this father makes toward becoming a father is that he gives up his life for his sons — including the son who does not deserve it. And let us be honest: neither son deserved it. Neither truly loved him. Yet he showed them that his love was not conditioned on their love for him. The way to a person’s heart is not through the stomach. Sacrificial love is the pathway to the heart.

The worst thing you can do is tell someone to obey you because you sired them — that is just control. The second worst thing is to make them feel that everything you do for them is done out of duty rather than love. “I have done my duty to you as a parent.” But the Bible says we have only one duty toward every person: to love them. Where love goes missing, a child can grow to wish the parent gone. I remember someone who once worshiped with us and drifted away. I kept visiting, kept praying, kept loving without conditions. One day she said, “Pastor, talking to you feels like talking to my father.” You do not become a father by laying down your life only for the good children. You lay it down, period — good, bad, or ugly.

He set boundaries instead of controlling

Watch the second thing. This father did not control his sons; he let them say no. That is one of the most powerful gifts you can give a child — the freedom to refuse. The worst thing you can do is override a child’s no, because then you raise a person with no boundaries at all.

Instead, set up a system of sowing and reaping — actions and consequences — and let them reap what their choices produce. The reason so many parents rush in to bail their children out is that they never let the child make the decision in the first place. If you tell a child to keep their room clean, there has to be a real consequence attached, or you are not truly helping them. Otherwise you end up nagging, or cleaning it yourself in frustration.

So build something like this: each day the room is clean, the allowance stands; each day it is not, a portion is deducted; and if you finally have to clean it yourself, that costs even more. It is a crude example, but you get the point. Create a world where the child has zero doubt about your total, absolute love — and at the same time is one hundred percent certain that if they make a mess of things, they will carry the consequence.

He celebrated his son

The third mark is this: keep the access to your heart wide open, and celebrate your sons — even for the smallest step in the right direction. Notice how the father in the story went out even to the older brother, the one who behaved well only because he wanted the father’s things. He did not wait for the older son to get his heart right before he went out to him; he kept the door of his own heart open and pleaded. Celebrate your children especially when they act in line with who you want them to become, because what you celebrate, you multiply.

One of the worst things we do is never praise and always complain. Some people will praise their child lavishly to their friends but never to the child’s own face. Let me say it plainly: if you commend someone to your associates but withhold it from the person, you are being selfish — you are using them to build your own pride. Celebrate your children even when it feels like too much, because people rise to praise. Give them something to live up to.

There is a sentence I carry with me: I was saved when I believed in God; I was transformed when I found out that God believed in me. That is what a father does. He believes in you out loud, and it changes you.

So who is a father? Not merely a man who has sired children. A father is someone who shapes the desires in another person’s heart, even when he is not in the room. And he does it four ways: he lays down his life for them, he refuses to control them and sets right boundaries instead, he builds a fair system of sowing and reaping, and he celebrates them for even the slightest step. If you want to father anyone, start by truly knowing the Father — and let the desires He forms in you begin to flow through you to others.