The Salvation of Babies Who Die, Part 1

Only pure, true, Reformed soteriology can account for the fact that fallen children who die with no spiritual merit can be welcomed by a holy God into eternal glory. Only Reformed theology can allow for that because only the purest theology believes that salvation is all by grace. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. A parent knows that sinking feeling when you've lost track of your child even for a moment, and there's nothing better, more comforting than finding out your child is safe. But is that sense of assurance and comfort available to parents who've lost a child to death?

How confident can they be that their child is safe and secure? Consider that today on Grace to You as John MacArthur begins a series titled What Happens to Babies Who Die? Well, John, even though it's been more than a year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision, which for nearly 50 years made abortion a federally protected right, still abortion is legal in many states and throughout the world. And of course, babies also die from many causes other than abortion. Does the Bible speak to the issue of what happens to the lives of those little ones who are lost? Well, I think the Bible does say enough for us to know the answer to the question, although there's not a Bible verse that says when babies die, they go to heaven.

You can deduce that from what the Scripture does contain. And I remember facing that, I think, for the first time in a public way. I was actually at a Ligonier conference.

I remember that. And the question was asked, what happens to babies that die? And they went across the panel, and no one had a definitive answer. And I thought, well, the Reformed theology might not have a conviction about this if there are that many possibilities. And so I dove into the subject, and out of that came a series of sermons on what happens to babies who die.

And I think this is a great, great series, and there are so many, many people who ask this question. We don't always think about it, but the common experience of a miscarriage raises this very same question. To say nothing of, you know, crib deaths and whatever else may happen to children. So in our own family, my own family, our own marriage, we've lived with the reality of a miscarriage. Most of you have connections to those families who have had children who have died from illness or disease or accident.

And no doubt billions of babies have died throughout human history. There's a massive amount of eternal creatures. What happens to them? Where do they go?

And what about adults who, because of disease or injury, have the mental capacity of a child? What happens after they die? Well, the fact is God's Word does give us what we need to know to answer the question. And that answer is going to be what we're going to provide for you from Scripture over the next few days as we look at the subject, what happens to babies who die? You're going to be encouraged by what you hear.

Don't miss a day. That's right, friend. If you have questions about this topic, if you or someone you know has lost a child, I encourage you to stay here today as John MacArthur begins his series titled What Happens to Babies Who Die?

Now here's John. This matter of death that exists in the world is obviously a massive force that operates in the realm of the little ones. And we need to understand what it indicates, what it means. Life begins at conception. That is clear in Scripture.

This is what the Bible teaches without question. So any death from the point of conception on is the death of a person and persons have eternal souls. Millions, perhaps billions of such souls have died throughout history. Millions continue to die today.

In fact, cumulatively in the modern era, billions. One report I read in a book says that up to twenty-five percent of all human conceptions do not complete the twentieth week of pregnancy. One out of four conceived die.

Seventy-five percent of fatal deaths occur in the first twelve weeks. Neonatal death, that is death in the womb, perinatal death, that is death at the time of birth occurred in massive numbers. Even today with medical advancement, we have a larger population in the world than we've ever had.

We have a lower mortality rate than we've ever had because of medical advancement. We still have a massive amount of deaths. The latest statistics indicate four million three hundred and fifty thousand babies died in that year, infant mortality.

The highest rates of infant mortality are found in the poorest and most primitive nations and at the same time the most pagan nations, mostly in Africa and Asia. You can see the numbers of deaths are massive, staggering. And these are, as I said, eternal souls. And the question about where are they then is of monumental significance.

They're either populating hell at an incredible rate or populating heaven at an equally incredible rate or getting divided into heaven and hell. This is a question that needs to be answered. It needs to be answered on the large scale.

It needs to be answered on the individual scale. A parent has the right to know, where is my baby? Where is my child?

Where is that adult child of mine whose mind never developed and who for all intents and purposes mentally is still an infant? The death of one single baby in a family, the loss of one in the womb, the loss of a child at birth is significant. There was a study some years ago that I read called, Mental Reactions to Perinatal Death.

And it chronicled the parental reaction to the loss of a baby around the time of birth. Sixty percent of the parents surveyed were angry. Fifty percent of the men felt guilt. Ninety percent of the women felt guilt about the death of that child. Seventy-five percent were irritable. Sixty-five to seventy-five percent of the parents lost their appetite. Eighty to ninety percent lost their sleep. And ninety-five to a hundred percent of them felt a profound and deep sadness. And it's important to understand that there are some amazing impacts of this on the life of parents. So when you look at it in the broad scale, millions upon millions of these little ones dying, or you look at it at the individual level and you see the sorrow and sadness that it brings into the life of a family, either perspective cries out for an answer from the agonizing mother in Afghanistan where 150 babies out of 1,000 die.

At least that's the figures that are reported and it's likely double that. Or the poor hungry mother in Angola where it is reported that 200 out of 1,000 die and it's likely double that to you here who lost a little one along the way. There needs to be an answer. There needs to be an answer from God. There needs to be an answer from God's Word to this troubling reality of infant death.

You start adding up the years, you start adding up the millions, you start adding up the billions. The question, where are they, becomes a very compelling question. Is the answer comforting? Is the answer encouraging? Is the answer hopeful?

Or is it discouraging? Do they go instantly to heaven? I'm not the first one to try to deal with this, but there are a lot of people who aren't dealing with it today.

I was on a panel at a conference, a large conference with three other pastors, and it was a question and answer panel and I was sitting up there with these other very fine pastors whom I love and respect. And one of the questions came from the audience was, what happens to babies that die? And they went down the first three. And the answer in each case was, I don't know, which isn't very comforting. And it puts me in a terrible spot because when they came to me, I said, they go to heaven.

They go to heaven. And I tried to give a brief explanation of why I believe that's true. But I thought, as I've looked back on that so many times, how can you be a pastor and not get an answer to that question?

Because you're dealing with people constantly who go through this. It's right, isn't it, to tell parents when children die they do live happily ever after? I think the Word of God will affirm the salvation of little ones who die.

A place to begin, and we're just starting to build the foundation here. In Job chapter 3, verse 16 and 17, again, Job is in some serious despair. How do we know that? Verse 1, Job 3, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Pretty serious despair. Job said, let the day perish on which I was to be born and the night which said, a boy is conceived. May that day be darkness. I wish I had never been born. This suffering is so profound, never been born. In verses 16 and 17, this is what he says, why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light?

Why didn't I die in my mother's womb? There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest. What's he saying? He's saying, I'd be better off if I miscarried. I would be better off if I were stillborn, so I wouldn't have to face troubling life, but I would enter immediately into what?

Rest, rest. Job understood that dying as an infant would bring one to rest, and one would escape the pain of suffering. He certainly didn't believe that infants that die go to hell and some eternal torment, but rather had the confidence that they enter into rest. In Ecclesiastes 6, 3 to 5, Solomon laments. He laments that a stillborn child is better off than a person who lives a thousand years twice and doesn't enjoy the right things.

He says, what's the point of living two thousand years? If you don't ever enjoy true goodness, you'd be better off a stillborn child. In both of these cases, you have by implication the idea that being stillborn takes you to a place of rest. Being stillborn is preferable to a life of wickedness, a life of unfulfillment.

Now those are some implicit references. So if we answer yes, what about babies that die? If we say instant salvation, yes, how are we going to understand that in the light of sin, in the light of fallenness? So I'm going to ask and answer a few questions.

I'm going to give you a little theology lesson here. First question, who qualifies as an infant or a child? Fair enough? People always say, well, what's the age of accountability? That's the way the question is typically answered.

I'd like to pose it another way. Who qualifies as an infant or child? Who are we talking about here? What is that age? And you often hear that question asked. That's really not the question because we're not talking about an age of accountability.

Get this in your mind. We're talking about a condition of accountability. Get the word age out of this discussion. We're talking about a condition of accountability, not an age. Who qualifies then in our discussion as an infant or child who dying is saved, who dying instantly goes to heaven? Who are we talking about? Answer, those who have not reached sufficient mature understanding in order to comprehend convincingly the issues of law and grace, sin and salvation.

I'll say it again because I thought about it a long time and this is the way I want you to hear it. We're talking about someone who has not reached sufficient mature understanding to comprehend convincingly the issues of law and grace and sin and salvation. This is certainly an infant in the womb, this is certainly an infant at birth, this is certainly a small child, and this is certainly a mentally impaired adult at any age. Anyone in the condition who cannot sufficiently understand and comprehend so as to be fully convinced of the issues of law and grace and sin and salvation. It's not an age, it is a condition. And from child to child, it varies. And as I said, you have to include in this those who grow up mentally disadvantaged, mentally disabled, mentally retarded, so as never to be able to have a sufficient mature understanding and a convincingly comprehensive grasp of law and grace and sin and salvation.

This is not an age, this is a condition. That's who we're talking about, people in that condition where they cannot in a mature way understand and comprehend convincingly these issues. We're talking about those people.

Are they safe if they die? The second question, are all children conceived as sinners? Are all children conceived as sinners? Now there is a belief, still around, though it was condemned 1600 years ago, there is a belief that teaches that all people are born without sin. They're all born, we're all born morally clean.

Sin only takes root in our lives when we commit our first sin. So we come in morally clean, this view says, and we commit sin by choice and then when we commit sin by choice, we become sinners and not until. Those who hold this view find it very convenient in dealing with children because they say since these little ones can't make a moral choice to sin, they are therefore not sinners so when they die, they go to heaven because they're not sinners.

They die in sinlessness. As I said 1600 years ago, this view called Pelagianism was denounced as a heresy by every church that met after the death of Pelagius and yet it's survived even till today in some forms of what we call Arminian theology. However, the Bible is absolutely crystal clear that all children are sinners from conception, all children. The principle of iniquity is embedded in the human race. Children are born morally corrupt. They are born with an irresistible bent toward evil. And any notion that children are born morally neutral and free from a predisposition to sin is absolutely contrary to Scripture.

And as I said, this view was denounced as heresy after the death of the one who propounded it and has been considered heresy by those faithful to biblical theology ever since. All humans are born in sin. If infants were not sinful, if they were not morally corrupt, then they wouldn't die. If they were born innocent or pure or morally neutral, there would be no basis for their death.

The very fact that they die indicates that the disease of sin is there in them because sin is the killer. It is in their inherited sin nature that the seeds of death are planted. Ever since Adam and Eve, everyone born has been born in a fallen sinful state.

That becomes evident as soon as any behavioral choice is made. We are born sinners. We are also born guilty because we inherit the guilt of Adam's sin.

I don't want to go into detail. If you want detail, you can get the teaching that we've done on Romans chapter 5, but a couple of verses, Romans 5, 12, just as through one man's sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sin. That is a profoundly definitive statement that says when Adam sinned, the whole human race became guilty in Adam and we all sinned there and we all died there. And every human that is born bears the guilt of Adam's sin, the principle of iniquity and death. We are born corrupt, inheriting this defiled human nature and bearing guilt for that original sin.

And so in the same chapter, Romans 5, 21, it says, sin reigned in death from that point on. All people then are born sinners. They are born resisting righteousness and loving evil. We are...this is a very important verse, Ephesians 2, 3, by nature the children of wrath.

That is our nature. Genesis 8, 21 says, the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Isaiah 48, 8, I know that thou wouldst deal very treacherously and was called a transgressor from the womb.

Now this is important. Every child is conceived with a deadly virus, the S-I-N virus, with corrupt motives, corrupt attitudes, corrupt desires, corrupt ambitions, corrupt objectives and bears the guilt of Adam's sin. So we cannot answer the question by saying, all babies die and go to heaven because they're sinless. They're not.

They're not. And the very fact that they die proves that they have inherited the corruption of sin that produces death. That leads us to a third question, and we're getting to the issues now. What implications does this truth of depravity have on the issue of dying infants? We must conclude that all babies are depraved sinners from the time of conception because they're born to depraved parents and like produces like. And here's where some people jump in and say, well, if they're all sinners, they're all born in sin, they're all guilty, then they're all damned to hell. And all the little ones who die by the millions and billions because they are sinful deserve death and hell, and that's where they go. And since they can't repent and since they can't cry out to God for mercy and grace, they can't believe in Jesus Christ, they all go to hell. There are people who believe that. There are people who've told me that repeatedly. This is sort of an implication drawn out of their doctrine of total depravity, that because all who are born are born in total depravity and deserve hell, they get hell.

It is supposedly their sequential or logical process moving from the view of total depravity. It was one of the accusations against Spurgeon. Spurgeon was strong on Reformed theology, and people accused Spurgeon, as they have accused others who believed in Reformed theology or Calvinism as it's called, of damning all the babies.

And maybe Spurgeon never responded better than this. He said, quote, Among the gross falsehoods which have been uttered against the Calvinist proper is the wicked calumny that we hold the damnation of little infants. A baser lie was never uttered. There may have existed somewhere in some corner of the earth a miscreant, a criminal, who would dare to say that there were infants in hell, but I have never met with him, nor have I met with a man who ever saw such a person. We say with regard to infant Scripture saith but little, and therefore where Scripture is confessedly scant, it is for no man to determine dogmatically. But I think I speak for the entire body, or certainly with exceedingly few exceptions, and those unknown to me when I say we hold that all infants who die are elect of God and are therefore saved, and we look to this as being the means by which Christ shall see of the travail of His soul to a great degree, and we do sometimes hope that thus the multitude of the saved shall be made to exceed the multitude of the lost. Whatever views our friends may hold upon the point, they are not necessarily connected with Calvinistic doctrine. I believe that the Lord Jesus who said of such is the kingdom of heaven, doth daily and constantly receive into His loving arms those tender ones who are only shown and then snatched away to heaven," end quote. If you survey Reformed Calvinistic literature over 450 years since Calvin, you will find that the vast majority of all the writers believe that all infants who die are taken to heaven. Now let me kind of expand on that.

This is very, very important. You see, it's only pure, true, Reformed soteriology, salvation. Only pure, true, Reformed soteriology can account for the fact that fallen, sinful, guilty, depraved children who die with no spiritual merit, die with no religious merit, die with no moral merit of their own, can be welcomed by a holy God into eternal glory. Only pure Reformed theology can allow for that because only the purest theology believes that salvation is all by grace. How were you saved?

By what? Grace. You say, well if God just takes all the babies to heaven, that's just grace.

Right. But how were you saved? By law.

What do you want? Law for babies and grace for you? You had no more to do with your salvation than a helpless infant. That's why the truest and purest theology is that theology which understands that salvation is by grace and maybe that's what Jesus had in mind in part when He said, you who go to heaven go to heaven as little children. Is there a better illustration of a salvation by grace than the salvation of a helpless infant?

True understanding, any true understanding of Scripture yields the reality that all salvation is by sovereign choice by God through grace based on nothing that the sinner merits. And is there a better illustration of that than saving lost infants? Does that magnify sovereignty? Does it magnify grace?

Of course it does. You're listening to John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of John's compelling study here on grace to you, What Happens to Babies Who Die? Friend, if you've been affected by the death of a child, John's current series can be an encouragement to you. And you can own this study for free in MP3 and transcript format.

And if CDs would be better for you, you can get those as well for a reasonable price. Contact us today. To order the CDs, call 855-GRACE.

And again, the title to ask for, What Happens to Babies Who Die? Our number one more time, 855-GRACE. And remember, you can download all three of these sermons from this series in MP3 and transcript format free of charge when you visit gty.org. And while you're at our website, keep in mind you can also download any of John's sermons, all free of charge. There are over 3,500 messages available in our sermon archive in both audio and transcript format. And remember, there are thousands of other free resources available as well at gty.org. So whether you're looking for biblical encouragement or simply you have a question about a particular Bible passage, you'll likely find a resource such as a sermon or a blog article or a devotional that covers that subject. Our web address again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week with us and join us again tomorrow to see how God's Word can comfort you, even if you're grieving the loss of a little one. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.