The Child Is Already His

In 2016 I asked God a question I could not answer myself. It was about children — the ones who die before they are old enough to understand anything, let alone choose. If Scripture says a person must believe and be baptized, what becomes of a child who never had the chance to do either?

He answered with one word. Just one. Ablution.

I did not know what it meant. I had to look it up.

The word

It means a ritual washing — in particular, the washing the priests underwent before they could come before God. And when Aaron was consecrated, Scripture is careful to say who did it:

Leviticus 8:6, KJVAnd Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water.

The priest did not wash himself. Another washed him. The cleansing was performed upon a man who could not perform it for himself.

I was given no explanation. Only the word. It took me ten years to understand that the answer was inside it.

What God Himself says about the children

For this is what God says about children, and He says it outright:

Ezekiel 18:4, KJVBehold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Read the order of that verse slowly, because everything is in it. Belonging to God is where every soul begins. What separates a soul from Him is that soul's own sin — and a small child has committed none.

He goes further, and gentler. Children are not merely permitted to God; they are named as His own — "children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward" (Psalm 127:3). And when they were carried to Jesus and His disciples tried to send them away, it was the sending away that angered Him:

Mark 10:13-16, KJVAnd they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

Of such is the kingdom of God. And mark what He did with them, because it is easy to read past: He did not wash them, and He did not baptise them. He took them up in his arms and blessed them. They were received exactly as they were — before any ceremony, and before any faith of their own.

And the rest of Scripture says the same thing in every key. Their angels "do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10). It is not "the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:14). And when David lost his infant son, he did not say the child was lost; he said, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23).

And see what happened when a whole generation of adults fell in the wilderness for unbelief. It was precisely the children who went in:

Deuteronomy 1:39, KJVMoreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.

Those who did not yet know good from evil crossed the Jordan and received the land. Those who knew better and would not believe were left behind.

To you, reading this with a child in mind

If you are reading this because you have lost a child, or because you are afraid for one, hear it as plainly as Scripture says it:

Your child is already His. There was nothing you failed to do.

No ceremony missed. No word left unsaid. Nothing performed too late, or never performed at all. The child did not have to reach God; God had never let go. And the cleansing of one who cannot cleanse himself was never that child's work — nor yours:

Ezekiel 36:25, KJVThen will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

Notice who does the sprinkling. He does.

One thing follows

And I will say it once, and gently. If a child is safe because God holds him, then no ceremony ever made him safe — and none was ever needed. The water Christ commanded is for the one who can hear, believe and answer for himself; it waits for that child, in its own time, as the confession of a faith he does not yet have. It was never a rescue. The child was never in danger.

And the water a priest pours

The washing of an infant is not the baptism Scripture commands. Peter defines the ordinance by ruling that out by name:

First Peter 3:21, KJVThe like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

Not a washing of the body — the answer of a good conscience toward God. An answer is something a person gives, and an infant has none to give. Nor does that water convey the Holy Spirit: in the house of Cornelius the Spirit fell on those who "heard the word," and only afterward was water brought (Acts 10:44–47). The Spirit came first; the water followed. The case is set out in full in Baptized on Your Faith.

So take it either way you need it. If your child was christened, that is not what saved him. If he never was, nothing was withheld. Christ did neither — He took them up in His arms and blessed them.

If you want to follow it further: the fuller account of that word and where it led is in Born Again; what Scripture actually says about baptising infants is examined in Baptized on Your Faith; and the whole biblical ground for baptism upon one's own faith is laid out in Through the Waters.

He gave me one word and no explanation, and trusted me to go and find out what it meant. This is what I found: the priest did not wash himself. Neither does the child. That cleansing was always God's to give.