Do babies and children go to heaven when they die?

Answer

The Bible does not explicitly address whether children who pass away before being born again go to heaven. However, there is enough indirect information in Scripture to piece together a satisfactory response, which pertains to infants, individuals with mental handicaps, and others.

The Bible explains that all humans born of human parents inherit corruption from Adam, ensuring that they will inevitably sin. This is commonly known as original sin. Although God created Adam and Eve in His likeness “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;”, (Genesis 5:1), the Bible states that after Adam and Eve sinned, Adam fathered children “in his own likeness” (Genesis 5:3;emphasis added;cf: Romans 5:12). All humans have inherited a sinful nature from Adam’s original disobedience; Adam became sinful, passing that sinfulness down to all his descendants.

The Bible straightforwardly discusses children who are not yet able “to reject the wrong and choose the right” “For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.”, (Isaiah 7:16). Romans 1 explains that one reason people are accountable before God is because they fail to acknowledge what is “clearly seen” and “understood” about God (verse 20).People who, upon observing and evaluating the evidence of nature, reject God are “without excuse.” This raises some questions: If a child is too young to discern right from wrong and lacks the capacity for reasoning about God, then is that child exempt from judgment? Will God hold infants accountable for not responding to the gospel, given their inability to comprehend the message? We believe that extending saving grace to infants and young children, based on the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement, aligns with God’s love and mercy.

In John 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. After the physical healing, the man undergoes a process of gaining his spiritual sight. Initially, the man is uninformed; he knows Jesus’ name but not His whereabouts (John 9:11-12). Later, he recognizes that Jesus is a prophet (verse 17) and that He is from God (verse 33). Subsequently, when conversing with Jesus, the man acknowledges his ignorance and his need for the Savior. Jesus inquires, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” to which the man responds, “Who is he, sir? . . . Tell me so that I may believe in him” (verses 35–36). Ultimately, having gained spiritual insight, he declares, “Lord, I believe” and worships Jesus (verse 38).

Following the man born blind’s profession of faith, Jesus encounters some spiritually blind Pharisees: “Jesus said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.’ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, ‘What? Are we blind too?’ Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’” (John 9:39-41). In essence, Jesus conveys, “If you were truly ignorant [blind], you would have no guilt. It’s because you are not ignorant—you are willfully unbelieving—that you stand guilty before God.”

The principle Jesus establishes in John 9 is that God does not condemn individuals for actions they are incapable of performing. “Sin is evaluated based on people’s capacities or abilities, as well as their opportunities to grasp the truth. If individuals lack the ability to fulfill God’s will, they cannot be held accountable. If they possess the necessary ability but lack the inclination, God deems them guilty” (Albert Barnes, New Testament Notes: Explanatory and Practical, ed. by Robert Frew, Baker Book House, Vol. 1, “Jn. 9:41”). According to this principle, infants and young children who are unable to accept or reject Christ are not judged for their lack of faith.

Until individuals reach an age where they can distinguish between right and wrong (often referred to as reaching “the age of accountability”), it appears that they are not held answerable by God. While toddlers may exhibit sinful behavior and inherit Adam’s fallen nature, their inability to comprehend moral concepts places them under God’s grace, in our view.

Other biblical examples “But now he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”, (e.g., David affirming that he would be reunited with his deceased child after death in 2 Samuel 12:23) support the plausible belief that infants go to heaven upon death. The same applies to individuals with cognitive impairments who are unable to grasp moral distinctions.