Scott Wiley here, the Executive Director of Wisdom International. We're celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. What began as a radio programme in a single city has grown into a global ministry now in sixteen languages. We're hosting a banquet to celebrate all that the Lord has done and you're invited. Please visit wisdomonline.org slash twenty five.
That's wisdomonline.org slash 25. There's a link in the show notes. And now here's Stephen with today's message from Wisdom for the Heart. Paul wrote something interesting in Romans 5, verse 7. For by one man's disobedience, that's Adam, many were made sinners.
So also by one man's obedience, that's Jesus Christ. Many will be made righteousness. They'll have attributed to their account the righteousness of Christ. And I would agree at this point with MacArthur and these other men that I've studied. His reference to many who are made righteous is a reference that would include this vast number of unborn, newly born, aborted, miscarried.
So, question number one: When does life begin? It begins. At the moment of a God-empowered, God-designed, God-ordained. God-purposed conception. Apart from that, life cannot begin.
It's in the power of God's hand. Let me answer another question. Does every person live forever?
Now the short answer is yes. Being created in the image of God. means, among other things, that we have been created eternal. Once life begins, we understand that at conception, it never ends.
So the critical question isn't so much will You live forever. It's where will you live? Forever, right? It isn't will you live. In fact, everybody on the planet intuitively knows that's true.
They were created, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, with eternity implanted in their heart. There's a knowledge and understanding. This isn't all there is. If they're honest enough, they'll admit it.
Now, the reason the question about babies is such a big issue for people inside the church and outside any religious system is because the law of God has been implanted on their hearts. And they know there's more out there beyond this brief. life as we know it. Do they live? Forever.
We went together through the book of Job, and I have to admit to you, I missed this implication.
Some of the verses were Brought back memories to me of our study, but I miss this particular implication. He writes in Job chapter 3 as he talks about describing what heaven is going to be like for infants who died at birth. or who were stillborn. Listen to what he says. In his suffering, remember he's speaking out of his great anguish.
He says, let the day perish on which I was born. In other words, I wish I'd never been born. But he also says, perish the night. that said, a male is conceived.
So he says, I'm going to go all the way back to when my life began. It's at conception. I wish that had never happened because I wouldn't be suffering then. He said, Why did I have to be born? Why didn't I die, verse 11 at birth?
Why did I come out from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Why did the breasts that I should nurse? For then I would have slept and been at rest.
Now, lest you think he's teaching some kind of limbo, some kind of soul sleep, he goes on to clarify in verse 16: Why was I not as a hidden, stillborn child, as an infant who never sees or saw the light? That is the light of birth. Then there He talks about this place there. The wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.
There the prisoners are at ease together. They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. Job is describing heaven. For these children.
who died stillborn. Pre-born. He compares his life of suffering and misery and sorrow with that of the stillborn child. That of the infant who dies young, and he concludes: they, under inspiration by the Spirit of God, he says, they have it so much better. Than me, because they are in a place now where there is no suffering, no toil, no taskmaster, no strife.
A place where they are forever at Peace.
Now Job knows that he's going to live one day with his redeemer. He says that in Job 19, verse 25.
So at the moment, he's actually saying he wished. His life had ended at conception or after conception. Go all the way back there.
so that he could skip everything and immediately land in paradise. Staggering implication, isn't it? as it relates to our Study. Here's the point children Live Forever too. Any human life At the moment of conception, forward, is not only living, they are eternally.
Alive. They're going to live somewhere forever. All right, let me ask a third question. Folllows closely. Is there something that we need to do?
Is there something we need to do so that infants and children can go to live forever in heaven. Is there something the church ought to do?
Well, obviously. From what we've just learned, we've got real problems with that question because the church is trying to answer the question only of those who were born alive, right? What about the miscarried and the aborted and the pre-born, the stillborn? I guess we have no hope for them. Which is an important question to me for the church to even deal with only those infants who were born alive.
Cowards. But to answer the issue, let's deal with infants and children who are birthed, who fill their lungs with air. Is there something we as grown-ups should do to guarantee them heaven? Good question. Of course, there are religions in the world that will try and resolve the issue.
Some will say we've got to give the child some sort of means apart from the grace of God whereby they're going to be received into heaven.
Some, throughout history, have taught that infants, along with everybody else, are going to have an opportunity to believe in Jesus Christ after. They're deaf. This is actually a view that gained a little spike of popularity. With Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, a man who used to pastor before he went apostate, taught a book that basically everybody eventually gets it right, gets into heaven. There is post-mortem salvation.
It's a corrupt view. Nothing of Scripture teaches or even hints at post-mortem salvation. In fact, if you'll bear with me for a moment, you go back into Luke's Gospel chapter 16, you have the man who dies. We're giving an inside peek at Hades. which at one point in time prior to the resurrection of Christ had paradise.
the good side, Abraham's bosom, and the side of eternal torment. And so this man finds himself in the place of torment. And he's tormented, he's thirsty. And he realizes he needs the mercy of God. But what you find him in his awareness now in torment that he needed the mercy of God, you don't find him immediately all saying, Oh, well, I got it now, so now I can be transferred over.
No. What you find him saying is, look, go tell my brothers who are alive, I don't want them to come here.
So somebody delivered to them what they need to repent of as well, so they don't come to this torment. And of course, he realizes that moment that if they die without believing, it is forever too late. His newfound belief did not transfer him into paradise with some kind of post-mortem salvation.
So he realizes At that point, it's too late.
Now other religious systems make baptism the means to an infant's Salvation. Let me read you one. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession says this: baptism is necessary to salvation, and that by baptism the grace of God. is offered, that is, it is meritorious. You receive grace, which we don't believe.
Who buy these children? who by baptism being offered to God are received into God's favor.
So if we can just get them alive to get a little water on them, then they're safe. To me, that's abhorrent. in so many different ways. That's the view held by Roman Catholics and Anglicans and Episcopalians, and I fear many Baptists think that you have to be baptized in order to be saved. There isn't a shred of biblical evidence that water.
Attributing it to some forehead or some part of a body can somehow guarantee an infant entrance into heaven. The worn-out argument. That since we're told in Acts chapter 16, verse 33, that the Philippian jailer who believed the gospel, that he was baptized and his household, that that proves there were infants there, even though we aren't told infants were in his household, but they evidently were baptized and therefore they also were redeemed. The trouble with that view is simply the preceding verse. Verse 32.
which tells us that Paul actually taught the entire household the gospel.
So if we're going to make any implication or assumption at all, it would be that all children were old enough to understand the gospel. And then follow. The parents in identifying with Christ through baptism. Listen, there isn't any ceremony, there isn't any initiation, there isn't any sprinkling, there's no holy water, there's no prayer, there's no incantation. There's no ceremony provided in the Bible as the means whereby an infant goes to heaven.
But as we've already seen, David assumes his child will.
So much so that he stops lamenting and grieving. And he says, I have my appetite back. Because I'm going to one day go. and be reunited with my child. How's that possible?
Well, some have suggested that it's possible because children aren't sinners. Children aren't. Sinners. People who suggest that Haven't had any. They certainly didn't raise me.
Others suggest that children do have a sin nature, but the clock doesn't start ticking until they sin. They really aren't tainted, so to speak. They aren't born with a sinful nature, they just start sinning and that's the problem. David cleared that up in Psalm 51, where he says, if we go all the way back to conception, I want you to know that I was conceived in sin. Not that my mother and father were in sin, but that I was tainted with sin at conception.
So we get to the question, how does a preborn A stillborn an innocent, perpetual child, disabled. Aborted. Go to heaven.
Well, let me tell you this, and we're going to tie a few things together. The Bible teaches that we are saved by faith. Grace. And that means Everyone who is saved is saved by grace. It is the grace of God that anybody is saved, let alone infants.
However, the Bible consistently teaches that while we are saved by grace, We are damned or condemned by works.
Now follow me carefully. You need to. Because I could be preaching heresy. You cannot be saved by works. Nobody in heaven is going to say, I did these really great things and God let me in.
Or the scale was tipped in my favor at the end of my life and I got in. That isn't true biblically. You cannot be saved by works. You can only be saved by it.
However, nowhere in the Bible is anyone ever threatened with hell merely for the guilt inherited from Adam. Let me give you another quote from John MacArthur, whose commentary on this subject provoked my thinking, and I had to think through other passages of scriptures along the way. He said, This: Whenever Scripture describes the inhabitants of hell, the stress is on their willful acts of sin and rebellion. Then he gives a number of passages: 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, and Ephesians 5. He makes this statement: Scripture always connects eternal condemnation.
with works of unrighteousness and willful defiance. against the law of God. If you think about that and you immediately take it to the end of human history as we know it, you find it to be consistent. In fact, at the great white throne, judgment, where all of the unbelievers of all time will eventually hear the verdict of eternal hell and punishment. What does God do there?
God the Son at the great white throne. Revelation 20 takes out books. and opens them and shows these condemned what? Their deeds. Their works.
And he isn't doing it to show them, boy, if you'd just done a few more good things and a few less bad things, you'd have gotten in. No, what he's doing at this moment is showing them that they sinned in willful rebellion against God and they are worthy of eternal punishment. The stillborn, the miscarried, the newborn, the innocent, the child has no such record. Romans chapter 1. Staggers the imagination as well along this, and yet finds itself consistently fitting in here.
Those who are going to be sent to hell are found to be without excuse. And they're found to be without excuse and condemned to hell, not because they heard the gospel and rejected it, by the way, because half the world will never hear the gospel. They are claimed by God to be without excuse through the Apostle Paul because they denied what they knew. What did they know? Romans chapter 1 says, They knew there was a what?
Creator. And they refused to give him thanks, which, by the way, has chilling implications to me, to somebody who says, I'm a Christian, but I don't believe in creation. They refuse to acknowledge God, Romans chapter one. And they also Rebelled against their conscience and the law of God written on their heart. Listen carefully.
No infant suppresses the truth. No pre-born has the ability to perceive what God has revealed in creation and then knowingly reject it. Until a child is older, and we're not told when older is older, by the way. We're not given an age of accountability. It's really more a state of accountability than an age.
But it is that point in time. When a person is mature enough to assess in his own heart the law of God, written on his conscience. Until they can summarize the glories. of nature. And God's creative ability, which Paul says in Romans chapter 1, proves to every human heart the fact that there is an invisible God who is very powerful, and they know that, and they reject it.
Suppressing the truth of God.
So these little ones aren't saved. Because they didn't believe. but because they couldn't. Believe. And you might be thinking But my child's a sinner.
early on. Come over to my house and watch my little boy hit his little sister over the head with a Tonka truck. A child very early demonstrates they have inherited Adam's nature. That's why your child won't run around the house going, yes, mommy, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They'll run around going, what?
No, no, no, no, no, no, until they learn what timeout means. or something far more. Painful. Yes, those actions are Sinful. or sinful.
And Christ would have to atone for them in his Unlimited atonement, touching them in his common grace. To quote MacArthur again, he writes this interesting thought. He said that young child might even lie to cover their misdeeds. But the child cannot assess in his own heart that his actions violate God. or that there is any such concept as sin against God and His holy law.
He knows that he's done something mom and dad don't like because mom and dad tell him. But he has no understanding that his rebellion, lying, stealing, and so forth are in violation of God's moral law and that such actions have eternal consequences, much less understand the concept. of eternity. This biblical scholar that MacArthur actually quotes in his commentary said this: If a dead infant We were sent to hell on no other account than that of original sin. inherited from Adam.
There would be a good reason to the mind of God for the judgment because sin is a reality.
However, The child's mind would be a perfect blank. as to the reason Of its eternal suffering. And take that back to Romans 1, they are without excuse because they knowingly rebelled against God's law. their minds would be a blank. They wouldn't understand this eternal suffering.
Under such circumstances, the child would know suffering. But it would have no understanding of the reason for its suffering and the very essence. of the just penalty would be absent. It's interesting to consider as well as you go back through the scriptures, which you may begin to do in earnest in regard to this subject. But whenever scripture describes the inhabitants of hell, It always has to do with a list of sins and abominations they've deliberately committed against God.
In other words, they've willfully rejected the law of God. They've suppressed the truth about God. They deny the creative agency of God. Not that by not doing those, you go to heaven, but when they're listed as enduring hell, it's because they have done exactly those things. Whenever it describes the recipients of heaven, We start talking about Grace.
The amazing grace. of God. That the atonement of Jesus Christ in the mystery of the crosswork, according to the grace of God. has allowed for these innocents. His minds are blank, so to speak.
who have not suppressed the truth. and willfully defied the law of God written on their hearts. into heaven. Paul wrote something interesting in Romans 5 that sounds contradictory to Matthew chapter 7 when Jesus Christ said, Narrow is the gate as a relations to salvation, and few there be that find their way in. But Paul says many find their way.
In Romans chapter 5, verse 7. But if you look at the context, he says this: For by one man's disobedience, that's Adam, many were made sinners.
So also by one man's obedience, that's Jesus Christ. Many Not a few, but many Will be made righteousness. They'll have attributed to their account the righteousness of Christ. And I would agree at this point with MacArthur and these other men that I've studied along with me in this text that while few find the narrow gate, his reference to many who are made righteous is a reference that would include this vast number of unborn, newly born, aborted, miscarried, young children, mentally incapable. Miscarried.
By the way, keep in mind that David stops grieving with the death of one son. He will grieve, yet not as those who have no hope, like perhaps you grieve. But another son of David will die. His name's Absalom. And David will never Stop grieving.
I believe it's because, among other things, he knows he'll never see that sun. Again. My question for you is, are you going to see your stillborn. Children. Or will you openly defy The knowledge of God written on your heart.
and refuse. The gospel you can understand. One more question. And I mean it. What's happening with your little one in heaven right now?
Do you really think I know the answer to that?
Well, what I can tell you is what I do know from Scripture. I know some things are true. First, those who leave earth. who leave their flesh behind, whether it is that cell that just began to Separate. Multiply.
Receive a temporary, capable body of enjoying everything that John sees them enjoying as he's given a tour of heaven. There's no pain, there's no sorrow, there's perfection and glorification and perfect worship. That's what your child is enjoying. I know also that the very moment your child went to be with Christ, God's purposes, and he hasn't told you what they all are, but God's purposes for him or her were absolutely completed. Because all of God's purposes are always fulfilled perfectly.
Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11. I also know that your child was made instantly perfect. Completely transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, which we all long for today, Philippians chapter 1, verse 6. I know that your child has a glory about him or her that should you see him or her, it would blow your mind. And that glory will never, ever fade away.
Romans chapter 8, verse 18. What happens between conception, death at that moment, and all of a sudden? Heaven. We get a lot of space in between, don't we? Are there changing tables and strollers and are there some angels that are condemned to keep the preschool for years and years and years?
Whatever the child's limitations or immaturities here on earth are gone instantly as they're. mature it instantly. In fact, we're given a little glimpse of that in the miracles of Jesus Christ. He says to a man who's lame, who's never walked, he says, get up and walk. Do you realize all the miracles involved in taking your first step?
It wasn't just, oh, his legs are going to work. It's memory. It's muscle memory. It's knowing this foot does this, this does that. It's balance.
It's not having any time to practice and it is perfectly balanced in walking. Taken from an inability to immediate ability. It's a little picture of our glorified bodies. and these little ones who are immediately given Memory. History.
Understanding.
so they can immediately begin to glorify God. for his grace. in their lives. And we're told that there is a multitude even now. which cannot be numbered from every tribe, tongue, clan, people group.
Dialect. Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever asked the question, since the gospel will not reach the world? How can there be those representing even Tribes. There's only one way to answer that.
Children. who represent that tribe. That dialect. that people group. who are now fulfilling the words of God in that unique way in bringing him glory.
And so David says, My son can't come back to me, but he says, I'm going to go to him. And I love the personal pronoun. He doesn't say, I'm going to go where he is. He doesn't say, I'm going to enjoy heaven like he is enjoying. He says, I'm going to him.
I'm going to him. as a person. I'm going to him. I'm going to be introduced to him. One day.
Maybe you're like others who've come up to me and said, you know what, I'm going to be introduced to mine as well. You will. Because you have the ability to breathe and think and accept. the gospel of Christ. When you do, you will join that little one who's now grown, who's mature, who's wholly perfected, who even now is singing and praising and serving God for his grace.
There you will join them and you also will sing amazing grace. How sweet. That sound. That was Stephen Davey, and this is Wisdom for the Heart, a production of Wisdom International. Learn more at wisdomonline dot org.
