Babies and the age of accountability

The loss of a child is devastating. I will not say any more. For Christians who believe the teaching of the Bible, the child has a sin nature that separates them from God. People are separated from God for the simple reason of sin. The human nature of sin, inherited from our Father Adam (Romans 5:12-21), is passed on to all generations, not unlike a genetic defect and is part of us before we are born to make conscious decisions.

The Bible has a lot to say about the womb because God sees and knows us from the womb. Psalm 53:8 (NKJV) says,

 “The wicked are estranged from the womb...” Our problem is not just in what we do in life, but in who we are from conception. 

Obviously, no one wants to think of their aborted baby, miscarried baby, stillborn baby, or child who dies at a young as being in hell.

Emotionally, the thought is simply too much to bear and contradicts all of the Bible’s teaching about God’s love, God’s grace, and God as a loving and gracious Father.

The age of accountability is the concept that those who die before reaching the age of accountability are automatically saved by God’s grace and mercy. The age of accountability is the belief that God saves all those who die never having possessed the ability to make a decision for or against Christ. Thirteen is the most common age suggested for the age of accountability, based on the Jewish custom that a child becomes an adult at the age of 13. However, the Bible gives no direct support to the age of 13 always being the age of accountability. It likely varies from child to child. A child has passed the age of accountability once he or she is capable of making a faith decision for or against Christ. Charles Spurgeon’s opinion was that “a child of five can as truly be saved and regenerated as an adult.”

(Got Questions Ministries. (2002–2013). Got Questions? Bible Questions Answered. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.)

In non-adults, the Spirit works too. The infant John the Baptist jumped “for joy” in the womb of his mother (Luke 1:41, 44). How could an infant experience joy, and godly joy at that? The passage doesn’t say. But it does certainly say that the Lord acts to bring about godliness, or something analogous to godliness, in a pre-born infant. In both OT and NT, the covenant promise is “for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). In the OT context this means that God chooses for his Son, not only individuals, but also households. The “household” pattern continues into the NT (as Acts 11:14; 16:31). That surely includes the infants in those households. Jesus’ blessing of the children leads to the same conclusion. His blessing was not just a display of affection, but a placing of the Father’s name upon them.

(Frame, J. M. (2017). The Theological Correspondence of John Frame. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.)

The View That God Elects All Infants and Saves Them by Irresistible Grace Apart From Faith
This position, as presented by five-point Calvinist Ronald Nash (b. 1941), goes something like the following:
    (1)      All who die before the age of accountability are incapable of moral good or evil;
    (2)      God will only punish people (in the next life) on the basis of evils they have committed in this life;
    (3)      All who die before the age of accountability, then, will not be punished in the next life (that is, they will be saved);
    (4)      Arminians, however, hold that faith is a necessary condition for salvation;
    (5)      Those who die before the age of accountability cannot believe (that is, have faith);
    (6)      Hence, according to Arminian doctrine, no one dying before the age of accountability can be saved;
    (7)      Calvinism teaches that God can regenerate people without their consent (faith);
    (8)      Consequently, only a Calvinist can consistently maintain that all who die before the age of accountability will be saved. (ibid.)
To support Nash’s first premise (that all who die before the age of accountability are incapable of moral good or evil), both Scripture and reason can be mobilized. The Bible speaks of an age before which an individual is not morally accountable. For instance, Nash cites Deuteronomy 1:39: “The little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad—they will enter the land. I will give it to them and they will take possession of it.”
The second premise (that the only punishment in the next life will be on the basis of evils committed in this life) is also scripturally based. Second Corinthians 5:10 declares that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” Since many believe that this passage specifically refers to believers, Revelation 20:12–13 is more to the point:
I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.
The third premise (that all persons dying before the age of accountability will be saved) follows logically37 and is likewise biblically grounded. Nash cites Matthew 19:13–14—“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (little children, v. 14)—and Mark 10:13–16 and Luke 18:15–17, where “babies” (infants) were brought to Jesus and He said: “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

(Geisler, N. L. (2004). Systematic theology, volume three: sin, salvation (pp. 444–445). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.)


To help lift the emotional burden, some teach an “age of accountability” which is both unbiblical and unhelpful.

It assumes that someone is not morally responsible until they reach an age of reasoning ability. No one can agree on when this age is, although many say it is around the beginning of the teen years. Furthermore, the concept is simply not clearly found in the Bible. Admittedly, some Scriptures point out the obvious fact that babies do not have the same level of moral reasoning as adults (e.g. Isaiah 7:15-16; Jonah 4:11), but to build upon that premise that children are morally innocent and therefore pure like Adam and Eve before the Fall in the sight of God and destined to Heaven does not logically follow.

A person does not go to sleep one night as an infant without moral responsibility and wake up the next morning as a child responsible for his or her conduct.

Moral responsibility is not merely our cognitive thinking, but also our emotional understanding. It’s not simply off until one day it goes on like a light switch. Our moral understanding and responsibility grow as we do physically. In this way, moral understanding is much like a dimmer switch: there is more illumination of right and wrong as we grow in wisdom with age.

A refutation of the concept of the age of accountability can be found in Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15:

“From childhood, you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” 

The word for “childhood” is “the period of time when one is very young – childhood (probably implying a time when a child is still nursing), infancy.” [FOOTNOTE: Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 648.]

It is possible for even a young child to know the Scriptures because there is not an “age of accountability” as much as growing moral responsibility as we come to better understand the instruction of our conscience internally and God’s word externally. We say this firsthand with each of our children who knew and loved the Lord, demonstrating evidence of the Spirit of God at work in and through them before they started school, and long before they were teenagers.

Jesus is, of course, the perfect example for this principle. Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.”

Jesus’ growth was holistic. He grew in every way as he aged. This was Jesus humbling himself, setting aside his glory and demonstrating humility by identifying with our humanity while retaining his divinity. Jesus’ example of growing in wisdom by the Spirit’s power as he grew physically is God’s intent for all who belong to him.

Therefore, those who want to put all departed little ones in heaven may not have a bad goal, but they do have a weak case. There are more weighty reasons to have hope.

Author: M.Driscol