Manage Your Household

He must manage his own household well, with all dignity (1 Timothy 3:4)

I have to admit, there are many times when my inadequacy as the leader of my home are apparent to me and those entrusted to me. I need more practical direction and less theoretical musing.

More than three centuries ago, Puritan church leader Baxter compiled a 1,143-page book entitled Christian Directory, which included a section on family life. The Godly Home is the only stand-alone version of that section of Christian Directory. It provides just the sort of direction men need today.

Here are five basic directions Baxter gives in advising men how to become skilled in leading their homes.

A General Direction: Labor for prudence and skillfulness in governing.

Whoever undertakes to be the master of a family undertakes to be their governor; and it is no small sin or folly to undertake such a place as you are utterly unfit for when it is a matter of so great importance. You could discern this in a case that is not your own, as if a man undertakes to be a schoolmaster who cannot read or write or to be a physician who knows neither diseases nor their remedies or to be a ship’s pilot who cannot tell how to do a pilot’s work. Why cannot you much more discern it in your own case?

Direction 1: To get the skill of holy governing, it is needful that you be studied in the Word of God.

Therefore, God commands the king that “he shall read in it all the days of his life” (Deut. 17:18–19), and it must “not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night” (Josh. 1:8). All parents must be able to “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” (Deut. 6:6–7; 11:18–19). All government of men is subservient to the government of God and is to promote obedience to his laws. It is necessary that we understand the laws to which all laws and precepts must give place and serve.

Direction 2: Understand the different tempers those entrusted to your care, and deal with them as they are and as they can bear, and not with all alike.

Some are more intelligent and some less so. Some are tender, and some have more hardened, impudent dispositions. Some will be best wrought upon by love and gentleness; and some have need of sharpness and severity. Prudence must fit your dealings to their dispositions.

Direction 3: You must recognize difference between their different faults, and accordingly suit your corrections.

They must be most severely rebuked who have most willfulness and those who are faulty in matters of greatest weight. Some faults are so much through mere disability and unavoidable frailty of the flesh that there is but little of the will appearing in them. These must be more gently handled, as deserving more compassion than reproof. Some are habitual vices, and the whole nature is more depraved than in others. These must have more than a particular correction. They must be held to such a course of life as may be most effectual to destroy and change those habits. Some are upright at heart in the main and most momentous things but are guilty of some actual faults, and of these, some more seldom and some more frequent. If you do not prudently diversify your rebukes according to their faults, you will harden them and miss your ends; for there is a fam- ily justice that must not be overthrown unless you will overthrow your families, just as there is a more public justice necessary to the public good.

Direction 4: Be a good husband to your wife and a good father to your children, and let love have dominion in your governing, that your family may easily find that it is in their interest to obey you.

For interest and self-love are the natural rulers of the world. The most effectual way to procure obedience or any good is to make men perceive that it is for their own good and to engage in self-love, that they may see that the benefit is likely to be their own. If you do them no good but are sour and discourteous and closehanded to them, few will follow you.

Direction 5: If you would be skillful in governing others, learn first to command yourselves.

Can you ever expect to have others more at your will and government than yourselves? Is he fit to rule his family in the fear of God and a holy life who is unholy and fears not God himself? Or is he fit to keep them from passion, drunkenness, gluttony, lust, or any way of sensuality who cannot keep himself from it? Will not others despise such reproofs, which are contradicted in your own lives? You know this is true of wicked preachers; is it not as true of other leaders?

I am humbled to think that in three hundred years, we aren’t doing any better and  in many ways are doing worse as men called to lead. I am also thankful that I can learn from those who have gone before in how to walk in the ancient pathways that lead to life.

If you’d like to read all of Chapter 3 or J.I. Packer’s excellent introduction, you can get it the excerpt here: Introduction, Chapter 3 – PDF You can also browse the whole book online!

Introduction by J. I. Packer
Editor’s Preface

1. Directions about Marriage
2. Worship of God in Families: Is It by Divine Appointment?
3. Directions for the Holy Government of Families
4. Motives to Persuade Men to the Holy Government of Families
5. Motives for a Holy and Careful Education of Children
6. Mutual Duties of Husbands and Wives Toward Each Other
7. Duties of Husbands to Their Wives
8. Duties of Wives to Their Husbands
9. Duties of Parents to Their Children
10. Duties of Children to Their Parents
11. Duties of Children and Youth to God
12. Directions for the Right Teaching of Children