Do Babies Really Go to Heaven?, Part 2

Paul wrote something interesting in Romans 5 or 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, Ms. Kerry. Do babies go to heaven when they die?

And if so, how is that possible? The Bible teaches that we're born with a sin nature and that we need to put our faith in Jesus Christ to be saved. But since a baby can't do that, how is it possible that she go to heaven without having responded to the gospel? These are the questions Stephen Davey is answering today on wisdom for the heart. King David experienced the pain and loss of having a baby die. We're looking at that account today in a message that Stephen's calling, do babies really go to heaven when they die?

This is an important lesson, so stay with us for all of it. 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 and 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 miss this implication. Some of the verses 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 want to go all the way back to when my life began. And that 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 didn't 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, preborn. 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. Alright, let me ask a third question.

Follows 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 preborn, the stillborn? I guess we have to 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 through that history have taught that infants, along with everybody else, are going to have an opportunity to believe in Jesus Christ after their death. 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. This man finds himself in the place of torment. He's tormented.

He's thirsty. 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 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. 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 it is meritorious. We receive grace which we don't believe. Who by 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 is 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 that 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 pre-born 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 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 grace. 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 his 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 first Corinthians 6 Galatians 5 and Ephesians 5. He makes the 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 that 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 just done a few more good things in a few less bad things you'd have gotten in. Now 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 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 is chilling implications to me to somebody who says I'm a Christian but I don't believe in creation. They refused to acknowledge God.

Romans chapter 1 and they also rebelled against their conscience and the law of God written on their heart. Listen carefully no infant suppresses the truth. No preborn 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. 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 time out 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 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 his eternal suffering. 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 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 cross work according to the grace of God has allowed for these innocents whose 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 it relates 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 and 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 son 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 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 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 no 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 gonna 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 that he's perfectly balanced and 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 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 gonna go to him and I love the personal pronoun he doesn't say I'm gonna go where he is he doesn't say I'm gonna 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 gonna be introduced to him one day maybe you're like others who've come up to me and said you know what I'm gonna 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 I'm sure you've probably thought about the question Stephen answered today do babies really go to heaven when they die there are certain messages that are just good for you to own and have available when you need it that way you can share it with people at opportune times and this is one of those messages you may have a friend or loved one who needs the comfort of God's Word and we want to help equip you I'll share one more time that last month we offered Stephen's ebook on this topic as our free resource of the month it's still available for you to download today if you go to our website we have a page where we offer a free resource each month the website is wisdom online.org forward slash offer that's wisdom online.org forward slash offer and even though there's a new offer this month the link to this ebook is still there again the ebook is called do babies really go to heaven when they die and it's free in our store right now we also have a magazine that we publish monthly the articles each month focus on a particular theme and explore various topics related to the Christian life Stephen's son Seth writes a daily devotional guide using that guide each day will help you remain grounded in God's Word the magazine is called heart to heart you can sign up for it on our website or you can call us today our number is eight six six forty eight Bible that's eight six six four eight two four two five three thanks again for joining us we're so glad you are with us and I hope you'll be with us next time on wisdom for the hearts