“Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well”
-2 Kings 4:26
The Shunammite woman was first asked by Gehazi, whether it was well with herself. She was mourning over a lost child, and yet she said, 'It is well.' She felt that the trial would surely be blessed.
Then Gehazi asked, “Is it well with thy husband?” He was old and stricken in years, and was ripening for death, yet she said, “Yes, it is well.” Then came the question about her child, which was dead at home, “Is it well with the child?” Surely this enquiry would renew her grief. Yet she said, “It is well,” perhaps so answering because she had faith that soon her child would be restored to her, or rather because she was persuaded that whatever might have become of its spirit, it was safe in the keeping of God, happy beneath the shadow of his wings. Therefore, not fearing that it was lost, and having no suspicion whatever that it was cast away from the place of bliss, she said, “Yes, the child is dead, but it is well.”
Let every mother and father know assuredly that it is well with the child, if God has taken it away from you in its infant days. You never heard its declaration of faith; it was not capable of such a thing. It was not baptised into the Lord Jesus Christ. It was not capable of giving that “answer of a good conscience towards God”; nevertheless, you may rest assured that it is well with the child, well in a higher and a better sense than it is well with yourselves. The child is “well” without limitation, without exception, infinitely and eternally.
Perhaps you will say, “What reasons have we for believing that it is well with the child?”
First, I shall endeavour to explain the way in which we believe infants are saved; secondly, give reasons for so believing; and then, thirdly, seek to bring out a practical use of the subject.
First of all, the way in which we believe infants to be saved.
Some ground the idea of the eternal blessedness of the infant upon its innocence. We do no such thing; we believe that all infants fell in the first Adam, “For…in Adam all die.” All Adam's posterity, whether infant or adult, were represented by him – he stood for them all, and when he fell, he fell for them all.
There was no exception made in the covenant of works made with Adam as to infants dying. Therefore, as they were included in Adam, though they have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, they have original guilt. They are “born in sin and shapen in iniquity; in sin do their mothers conceive them.” David says this of himself, and (by inference) of the whole human race.
If infants are to be saved, it is not because of any natural innocence. They must enter Heaven by the very same way that we do; they must be received in the name of Christ, “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid.” There is no different foundation for the infant than that which is laid for the adult.
On what ground, then, do we believe the child to be saved? We believe it to be as lost as the rest of mankind, and as truly condemned by the sentence which said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” 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 briefly 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 those dying in infancy with the same price with which he redeemed their parents, and therefore are they saved because Christ was Sponsor for them, and suffered in their stead.
They are saved, also, by regeneration, for, “except a man”—the text does not mean exclusively an adult man, but a being of the human race—“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, so that it enters into glory made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.
That such regeneration is possible is proved from Scripture. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. We believe, therefore, that even before the intellect can work, God, by the mysterious agency of his Holy Spirit, may create the infant soul a new creature in Christ Jesus, enabling it to enter into the rest which remaineth for the people of God.
By election, redemption and regeneration, the child enters into glory. If we did not suppose that dying infants were saved in the same way as adults, it would be necessary to suppose that God's justice could be set aside, and that his plan of salvation could be altered to suit their case.
Secondly, the reasons why we thus think infants are saved. We ground our conviction about infant salvation very much upon the goodness of the nature of God. We say that the opposite doctrine that some infants perish and are lost, is altogether repugnant to the idea which we have of him whose name is Love. If we had a god whose name was Moloch; if God were an arbitrary tyrant, without benevolence or grace, we could imagine some infants being cast into hell. But our God, who heareth the young ravens when they cry, certainly will find no delight in the shrieks and cries of infants cast away from his presence.
We read of God that he is so tender that he would not have the mouth of the ox muzzled when treading out the corn. He cares for the bird upon the nest, and would not have the mother bird killed while sitting upon its nest with its little ones. He made ordinances and commands even to protect irrational creatures.
Shall we believe with such universal goodness as his, that he would cast away the infant soul? I say it would be so contrary to all that we have ever read or ever believed of him, that our faith would stagger before a revelation which should display a fact so singularly exceptional to the tenor of his other deeds.
We have learned humbly to submit our judgements to his will, and we dare not criticise or accuse the Lord of all. He is just; let him do as he may! Whatever he reveals we will accept! But he never has, and I think he never will, require of us so desperate a stretch of faith as to see goodness in the eternal misery of an infant cast into hell.
You remember when Jonah—petulant, quick-tempered Jonah—would have Nineveh perish, God gave as the reason why Nineveh should not be destroyed, that there were more than six-score thousand infants—persons who knew not their right hand from their left. If he spared Nineveh that their mortal life might be spared, do we think that their immortal souls shall be needlessly cast away?
Again, we think that eternal banishment of those dying in infancy would be utterly inconsistent with the known character of our Lord Jesus Christ. When his disciples put away the little children whom their anxious mothers brought to him, Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” By this he taught, as John Newton very properly says, that such children made up a very great part of the kingdom of Heaven.
When we consider that upon the best statistics it is calculated that more than one third of the human race die in infancy, and probably half the population of the world, if we take into calculation those districts where infanticide prevails, the saying of the Saviour derives great force indeed— “of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Now for one or two incidental matters which occur in Scripture which seem to throw a little light also on the subject. We must not forget the case of David. His child by Bathsheba was to die as a punishment for the father's offence. David prayed and fasted and vexed his soul, but at last they told him the child was dead. He fasted no more, but he said, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
Now, where did David expect to go to? 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 did not stand over his corpse and say, “I shall go to him.” He had no hope for that rebellious son. Over this child it was not—“O my son!…would God I had died for thee!” No, he could let this babe go with perfect confidence, for he said, “I shall go to him.”
Then you have the passage, '”Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.” The coming out of Egypt was a type of the redemption of the chosen seed, and you know that in that case the little ones were to go forth. Why should not children in the greater deliverance join in the song of Moses and of the Lamb?
In Ezekiel 16.21 God censures his people for having given up their little infants to Moloch, having caused them to pass through the fire, and he says of these little ones, “Thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire.” So, then, they were God's children while babes.
We may therefore believe concerning all those who have fallen asleep in these early days of life, that Jesus said of them, “These are my children.” He still carries the lambs in his bosom, as Isaiah says.
There is another passage in Scripture which may be used to show that the sin of the parents shall not necessarily be the ruin of their children. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy there had been a threatening pronounced upon the children of Israel in the wilderness, that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, they should never see the promised land. Nevertheless, it is added, “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.”
Inasmuch as the sin of the generation in the wilderness did not shut the next generation out of Canaan, so the sin of unbelieving parents shall not necessarily be the ruin of their children, but they shall still, through God's sovereign grace and his overflowing mercy, be made partakers of the rest which he hath reserved for his people.
From “Infant Salvation” by C.H. Spurgeon (The Sword & Trowel 2007, issue 2)
