Can A Child Be Born Again?

by Charles Hadden Spurgeon



It is interesting to take glimpses into the past to see what opinions and attitudes prevailed at certain times in history. In Spurgeon's day (1834-1892), it was a common opinion that children could not or should not be born again for various reasons. He addresses some of those attitudes in the following statements. Spurgeon had much to say on ministry to children. He himself had a dramatic conversion at the age of seventeen. These quotes come from a book entitled "Come Ye Children" by Pilgrim Publications, Pasadena, TX 77501. It is 160 pages of sermon excerpts all on training children in the truths of the gospel.

Can A Child Be Born Again?

"Talk not of a child's incapacity for repentance! I have known a child weep herself to sleep by the month together under a crushing sense of sin. If you would know a deep, and bitter, and awful fear of the wrath of God, let me tell you what I felt as a boy. If you would know joy in the Lord, many a child has been as full of it as his little heart could hold. If you want to know what faith in Jesus is, you must not look to those who have been bemuddled by the heretical jargon of the times, but to the dear children who have taken Jesus at His word, and believed in Him, and loved Him, and therefore know and are sure they are saved. Capacity for believing lies more in the child than in the man."

How Old Must a Child Be to Be Saved?

"I will not say at what age children are first capable of receiving the knowledge of Christ, but it is much earlier than some fancy; and we have seen and known children who have given abundant evidence that they have received Christ and have believed in Him at a very early age."

"Ay", say they," but if we should let the children come to Christ, and if He should bless them, they will soon forget it. No matter how loving His look and how spiritual His words, they will go back to their play, and their weak memories will preserve no trace of it at all." This objection we meet in the same manner as the others. Do not men forget? What a forgetful generation do most preachers address! ... Forgetfulness! Charge not children with it lest the accusation be proven against yourselves...The young children who heard our Lord's blessing would not forget it."

Unreal Expectations of Child Converts

"The seniors shook their heads at the idea of receiving children into the church. Some even ventured to speak of converts as "only a lot of boys and girls" : as if they were the worse for that. Many if they hear of a child-convert are very dubious, unless he dies very soon, and then they believe all about him. If a child lives they sharpen their axes to have a cut at him by way of examination. He must know all the doctrines, certainly, and he must be supernaturally grave. It is not every grown-up person who knows the higher doctrines of the Word, but if the young person should not know them he is set aside.

"Some people expect almost infinite wisdom in a child before they can believe him to be them subject of Divine grace. This is monstrous. Then, again, if a believing child should act like a child, some of the fathers of the last generation judged that he could not be converted, as if conversion to Christ added twenty years to our age. Of course, the young convert must not play anymore, nor talk in his own childish fashion, or the seniors would be shocked; for it was a sort of understood thing that as soon as ever a child was converted he was to turn into an old man. I never could see anything in Scripture to support this theory...At any rate, learn from the Master's words that you are not to try and make the child like yourself, but you are to be transformed till you yourself are like the child."

Let The Children Come

"Children need to learn the doctrine of the cross that they may find immediate salvation. I thank God that in our Sabbath-school we believe in the salvation of children as children. How very many has it been my joy to see of boys and girls who have come forward to confess their faith in Christ! And I again wish to say that the best converts, the clearest converts, the most intelligent converts we have ever had have been the young ones; and, instead of there being any deficiency in their knowledge of the Word of God, and the doctrines of grace, we have usually found them to have a very delightful acquaintance with the great cardinal truths of Christ. Many of these dear children have been able to speak of the things of God with great pleasure of heart and force of understanding. Go on, dear teachers, and believe that God will save your children."

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