TEXT: Job 1:21b

SUBJECT: Family Life #23: Do Babies Go to Heaven?

This is the fourth Sunday of the month and time for another sermon on Family Life. Let me give the topic in the form of a question:

That’s a hard question. Doctrinally. And emotionally. But it’s also important. Some of you have lost babies. I feel nothing but sympathy for you. I can’t imagine the pain and sorrow that brings into a family’s life. Some tears will be there till God Himself wipes them away.

But back to the question. There are four possible answers. Here they are:

1. All babies go to heaven when they die.
2. Some babies go to heaven when they die.
3. No babies go to heaven when they die.
4. We don’t know.

The first answer is also the most popular. Most people believe that all babies go to heaven when they die. Why do they believe that?

Some believe that babies are innocent. If God is just He cannot condemn someone who has not sinned.

It’s true that God is just. But are babies innocent? The Bible says they are not. Psalm 51:5, Psalm 58:3,

Babies are not as guilty as their parents are. But they’re guilty.

Others say it is not innocence that assures the baby of heaven but incapacity or inability (or, having no chance to believe the Gospel).

This is a far better argument than the other, but it won’t hold up in light of Scripture.

Your responsibility to God does not depend on your ability. If it did, no one (but Adam and Eve) could be held responsible because, since the Fall,

Yet sinners are held responsible for their sins. And God is perfectly just in doing so.

But what about the other part? If a child has no chance to believe the Gospel, how can he be lost for not believing what he never could hear?

The answer is pretty much the same. According to Romans 1, those who have never heard the Gospel are still lost.

A third argument finds the salvation of infants—not in themselves—but in God. The Lord’s great mercy saves them all. One of my heroes believed that, Charles Spurgeon.

This is a far better argument than the others. But there are two problems with it:

No verse in the Bible says God’s great mercy guarantees the salvation of babies.

Also, it proves too much. If the universal mercy of God saves every infant, then logically, we could say it saves every sinner. Which is does not! The mercies of God are universal (Psalm 145:9, Psalm 33:5). But they do not save everyone.

Finally, there are verses used to prove the salvation of all babies. The three best known are II Samuel 12:23, II Kings 4:26,

In the first, "I shall go to him" just means David is going to join his son in death (not necessarily in heaven). For its parallel, see I Samuel 28:19.

In the second, "It is well…with the child" is meant ironically. Things were not well with her, her husband, or her child!

The third, "Let the little children come to me…" is true, of course, but has no direct bearing on our subject.

It is quite possible that all babies go to heaven when they die, but none of these verses or arguments prove it.

The second possibility is that some babies go to heaven when they die.

This is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. According to its Dogma, baptized infants go to heaven; the unbaptized go to Limbus Infantum, which is a good place, not full of torments, but still, outside of heaven.

The Westminster Confession of Faith also implies that some infants go to heaven. In 10:3, it says,

By saying, "elect infants", the framers seem to imply that some infants are not elect, and therefore, not saved.

I looked up the Bible references to this article, and to the best of my knowledge, none of them had anything to do with the doctrine they were supposed to prove. If you think otherwise, look them up yourself!

It is possible that only some infants go to heaven when they die. But it has not been demonstrated from the Bible.

The third possibility is No infants go to heaven when they die. I’ve only heard one man say this. He’s a friend of mine and a good pastor. He wrote me a letter saying the belief that some infants are saved is…

His argument is very simple. No one can be saved without faith in Christ. But infants do not have faith in Christ. Therefore, infants cannot be saved.

This is not only the man’s private opinion, but he has preached it from the pulpit and put it into his church’s confession of faith.

Most of us would find his teaching utterly repulsive. But saying that is a lot different than answering him. Much of what he says is true. Justification is by faith alone in Christ alone. And "Without faith it is impossible to please Him".

But here’s the mistake: If faith is the gift of God, who’s to say He didn’t give it to the baby? My friend would say, where’s the fruit of the baby’s faith? But I would reply, we don’t know what Baby Fruit looks like! Maybe the "goo-goos" are hymns of praise! Maybe the hugging is "love"; maybe the smile is "joy"; maybe the long nap is "longsuffering"; maybe the burp is "self-control". Because we do not know what Baby Faith looks like, we have no way of judging whether the baby has it or not!

My friend is a very strong Calvinist. But, on this point, he’s slipped into Arminianism, forgetting that faith is not an act of the human will, but the gift of God. And

The proposition that no babies go to heaven when they die is not proven.

That leaves one more possible answer. It may not satisfy you, but I find it comforting. The answer is: We don’t know.

The Bible does not say what happens to infants when they die. In his Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Sam Waldron writes,

If the man is right, this creates a very big problem. How can the Bible—God’s Word—not answer the question? People lose babies every day. In many places, the Infant Mortality Rate is appallingly high. How can God not tell us what has become of our babies?

Because we don’t need to know. We may want to—want to more than anything else! But if we needed to know, the Lord would make it plain. Psalm 84:11 says,

If you don’t need to know, you have to be satisfied with not knowing, Psalm 131:1-2,

A weaned child has learned to be quiet without the breast. We have to be satisfied without all the answers.

That is one of the Big Lessons from the Book of Job. Reading the Book, we know why Job lost his fortune and family and health and why God didn’t answer him when he cried for help. But Job didn’t know and the Lord never explained it to him.

He had to be satisfied not knowing. So do we.

Though the Bible does not answer every question we have, it does tell us how to live when our questions are not answered. It tells us,

1. Don’t worry.
2. God will do what is right.
3. God is well able to save a baby.
4. You can trust Him, no matter what He does.
5. Most importantly, it tells you that when something terrible happens to you—like the loss of a child—Jesus Christ enters into all your sorrows. The Man who bawled at the grave of His friend has not changed!

Knowing Him in times of heartache is far better than knowing answers.