Infant salvation

‘Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well.’ 2 Kings 4:26

Suggested Further Reading: 2 Samuel 12:13–23

The child is saved, if snatched away by death as we are, on another ground than that of rites and ceremonies and the will of man. On what ground, then, do we believe the child to be saved? It is saved because it is elect. In the compass of election, in the Lamb’s book of life, we believe there shall be found written millions of souls who are only shown on earth, and then stretch their wings for heaven. They are saved, too, because they were redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. He who shed his blood for all his people, bought them with the same price with which he redeemed their parents, and therefore they are saved because Christ was sponsor for them, and suffered in their room and stead. They are saved, again, not without regeneration, for, ‘except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ No doubt, in some mysterious manner the Spirit of God regenerates the infant soul, and it enters into glory made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. That this is possible is proved from Scripture instances. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. We read of Jeremiah also, that the same had occurred to him; and of Samuel we find that while yet a babe the Lord called him. We believe, therefore, that even before the intellect can work, God, who works not by the will of man, nor by blood, but by the mysterious agency of his Holy Spirit, creates the infant soul a new creature in Christ Jesus, and then it enters into the rest which ‘remaineth … to the people of God.’

For meditation: Men cannot affect the eternal destiny of infants, but ‘Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’ (Genesis 18:25). Spurgeon asks ‘Where did David expect to go? Why, to heaven surely. Then his child must have been there, for he said, “I shall go to him”. I do not hear him say the same of Absalom … He had no hope for that rebellious son.’ (Psalm 23:6; 2 Samuel 12:23). He also mentions Ezekiel 16:21 where God describes sacrificed infants as ‘my children.’

Sermon no. 411
29 September (1861)