Do babies and the mentally handicapped go to heaven when they die?

Death is a devastating consequence of the Fall.

Sometimes that consequence comes to a person who never had the capacity to trust Christ consciously, the only way to the Father (Jn 14:6). When this happens, the world feels off its axis.

And so the question often arises: what becomes of those who never had the ability to believe? What of the babies, the stillborn, the miscarried, or the man or woman whose mind never developed beyond infancy?

The Bible doesn’t provide a direct answer, unfortunately. But when we listen carefully to the whole of Scripture, its truths begin to form a pattern that takes shape before us.

It’s true that infants and those with underdeveloped minds cannot consciously trust in Christ. But it’s also true that they have never consciously rejected Him either. That distinction matters for this context. Scripture teaches that judgment comes not merely because humanity is fallen in Adam, but because people, due to the Fall (the noetic effects of sin), knowingly suppress God’s revelation. [1]

Though all people share in Adam’s guilt and corruption by nature (Rom 5:12; Eph 2:3), Scripture also speaks of a further culpability that arises when fallen hearts willfully reject the truth made plain to them (Rom 1:18–21; Jn 3:19–20).

This is unpacked in Romans 1, where Paul describes willful resistance in contrast to an ignorance that arises from incapacity: “By their unrighteousness they suppress the truth” (v 18). This shows that those under judgment aren’t simply unaware of God; they actively restrain and reject the knowledge of Him that creation makes plain. Paul is describing those who have reached a point of moral accountability, one way or another. Jesus said that those who reject His word will be judged by it (Jn 12:48). Thus, Paul concludes that the conscious person is “without excuse” of God’s judgment because God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived in what He has made (Rom 1:20). [2]

This is how John Piper seems to understand Romans 1, emphasizing that accountability presupposes revelation (that judgment ultimately falls where people have been given sufficient clarity of God’s self-disclosure and have rejected it). In other words, accountability arises where revelation has been genuinely perceived and then resisted. This principle applies to those who have reached what is sometimes called “the age of accountability." [3] Infants and those with severe cognitive disabilities live beneath that threshold of perception. They share in humanity’s corruption, but they cannot perform the moral act of suppression. If condemnation follows willful rejection, then by extension, these individuals lack that willfulness.

Moses identified this distinction when he spoke of the little ones of Israel, “who this day have no knowledge of good or evil” (Deut 1:39). They are not morally neutral, but morally unawakened. Their eyes are open, but they cannot yet distinguish light from darkness.

Still, to be sure, they share in the ruin of the Fall. David confessed, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). Paul declared that through Adam “sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men” (Rom 5:12). The stain of sin runs through every human being, including the unborn and the mentally handicapped.

So the question isn’t whether they’re fallen. They are. The question is how God, in perfect righteousness and mercy, deals with a fallen human who lacks mental capacity in the context of judgment.

That answer begins with who God is. The palsmist says, “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day” (Ps 7:11), but we are also told that He is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps 86:15). Furthermore, He is “righteous in all His ways and kind in all His works” (Ps 145:17). God’s kindest act towards us was when He sent His Son into the world. John writes that Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2).

Soteriologically, then, Christ’s death fully satisfies divine justice. Because of that, God is both just and free to apply the benefits of that atonement according to His gracious will—even to those who cannot consciously receive or reject it. [4]

As it relates to the question, Jesus revealed God’s posture toward children. When His disciples argued about greatness, He called a child to Himself and said, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom” (Matt 18:3–4). Later, when others tried to turn children away, He rebuked them. “Let the little children come to Me,” He said, “and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 19:14).

In these moments, Jesus wasn’t declaring children morally innocent, but revealing that their humble dependence and readiness to receive make them living pictures of the posture required to enter God’s kingdom. In this, He didn’t say merely that the kingdom has room for children. He said it belongs to them.

Here’s where this leaves us. We often imagine heaven as the reward for those who have understood and believed—and that is true in its own right (Rom 10:9–10). Yet Jesus pictures heaven here as the home of those who dependently receive. Perhaps, in the strange economy of heaven, it is the children who ask, “Do the rebellious adults and the able-minded go to heaven when they die?”

This is the underlying reason why the disciples, astonished by the impossible standard required for salvation, asked Jesus, Who then can be saved? (Matt 19:25) and why Jesus responded with “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26).

There is one moment in Scripture where the hope of God’s grace on children comes into clearer view. When David’s infant son died, he said, “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam 12:23). Here, David wasn’t speaking of the grave. He was speaking of reunion in the presence of God, what we understand as heaven. His comfort wasn’t rooted in his own righteousness, but in the mercy of the God he had come to trust.

So, where does this leave us? Well, taken together, the witness of Scripture gives reason to believe that babies and the mentally underdeveloped are gathered into God’s presence when they die. Indeed, insofar as I understand it, those little and limited ones are right now more alive than we are.

If salvation is by grace, then this is grace in its purest form. The Fall is deep, but God’s mercy goes deeper still. He saves the helpless because that is what He delights to do. In their salvation, the nature of the gospel is laid bare. It’s not our comprehension that saves us, but Christ’s compassion. And even our comprehension is His compassion (Eph 2:8–9).

Indeed, His mercy reaches where our minds cannot.

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This post first appeared on "At The Well": https://jaredcwellman.substack.com/p/do-babies-and-the-mentally-handicapped

1 The “noetic effects of sin” (from the Greek word nous for “mind” or “understanding”) refer to the ways the Fall has corrupted human reason and understanding. Because of sin, the mind is darkened and inclined toward error, especially in relation to the knowledge of God (Gen 6:5; Rom 1:21; Eph 4:17–18). This doesn’t entirely erase human rational capacity but it does distort it, so that apart from divine grace people inevitably suppress or misinterpret God’s truth.

2 John Piper, “We Are Accountable for What We Know,” Desiring God, September 27, 2016, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/we-are-accountable-for-what-we-know

3 In other words, the consideration in this piece doesn’t apply to those who, though never having heard the gospel, nonetheless suppress the truth revealed in creation because they have a capacity for awareness (Rom 1:18–20).

4 See footnote 3.