Why do babies die?

Adam brought in sin and death, and death passed upon all his descendants irrespective of their own personal disobedience. Babies die who have not sinned. It is impossible that God could allow man to continue for ever a life of sin. Life may be lengthened out to nigh a thousand years, or it may be closed in as many minutes, but it must be brought to a close, for man is by nature sinful.

And with this Scripture perfectly harmonizes. It does so in the fact that death reigns everywhere through one offence: over those who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam, and over the youngest babe who has never sinned at all. Did God for this one offence condemn forever all Adam's unborn posterity? Theology may say so; but not the word. Could the penalty for Adam's sin upon all his descendants be worse than that of their own, as Mr. Birks puts it?

Every child of Adam inherits something from him: sin. And as a result of sin there is death. Until today death is everywhere and proves that sin has reached every child of Adam.

Death is a fearful thing. It is the judgment of God upon man, because of sin. Death came in by sin. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men," etc. (Rom. 5:12). There was no such thing in all the world till Adam sinned. Now we see the stamp of death on everything. Every child born into the world is born under the sentence of death. Men live all their lives beneath its sentence. I know they try to think of death as a sort of accident. Often the innocent physician gets the blame. It is a troublesome intruder, of course, but they must make the best of it. So they summon the florist to their aid. They strew flowers on the coffin and the tomb is decked with roses. And the preacher must not breathe one word about death being the wages of sin." And I notice, too, that now, instead of solid black, they mingle violet with the crape. Ah, if only some wonderful man of science could devise means to do away with death entirely, but they cannot. They boast of progress, but I notice men are dying just as fast as ever, and if not a little faster. Wonderful strides have been made in surgery and medicine, but men and women die younger, on an average, than they did one hundred years ago, when they were not so smart. Oh, that men, instead of painting death in colors, false and gay, would submit to the truth and prepare for what awaits them!

The fact is, so far from the truth are those who judge solely from present experience, that man was naturally made at the outset to live. Death was sin's wages, not then a physiological necessity. God had provided the means for prolonging his life if obedient; but deprived him of that means peremptorily when fallen. For what greater misery, or moral anomaly, than an everlasting life of sin? Death therefore is in no way a debt of nature but of sin; and here we read its knell for each even of those who stood aloof from the evil way of Cain, the ancestors not of Israel only but in due time of the Messiah. Of Adam, so of Seth, Kenai], Mahalaleel, Jared, it was alike said "he died." Now that man is a sinner, it is the one event that happens to all in the seen world; in the unseen there will be another still more solemn. "For it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this judgment" (Heb. 9:27).

The loss of a child. Faith will teach you to kiss a striking Lord; and so acknowledge the sovereignty of God (in the death of a child) to be above the power of us mortal men, who may pluck up a flower in the bud and not be blamed for it. If our dear Lord pluck up one of His roses, and pull down sour and green fruit before harvest, who can challenge Him? For He sendeth us to His world, as men to a market, wherein some stay many hours, and eat and drink, and buy and sell, and pass through the fair, till they be weary; and such are those who live long, and get a heavy fill of this life. And others again come slipping in to the morning market, and do neither sit nor stand, nor buy nor sell, but look about them a little, and pass presently home again; and these are infants and young ones, who end their short market in the morning, and get but a short view of the fair. Our Lord, who has numbered man's months, and set him bounds that he cannot pass, has written the length of our market, and it is easier to complain of the decree than to change it.

The fact that death lies upon all that are born into this world, and that sooner or later every individual must by that means pass from here, is enough to prove that the Creator does not intend to go on for ever with things as they at present are upon earth. From the moment of birth until the last breath has been drawn, men wage a grim battle with the king of terrors, but the issue of the conflict is not difficult to forecast. It may be as an infant of days, or it may be as a centenarian, but the end has to come; to that monarch all must bow.

The case of the sinner is here stated (verse 12), not on the moral evidence of personal evil, but on the decisive testimony of death. Death is God's pervading and irrefragable witness of the presence, in and throughout the world, of that which produced it, even sin. "Sin entered into the world, and death by sin." But the means of this entrance of sin are immediately stated. It was "by one man." Adam died by the direct sentence of God pronounced upon his transgression. Mankind die because born of one who was himself mortal as thus judged. But death is not derived to the posterity of Adam, merely as an effect of his mortal condition, but as a consequence of his sinful nature. Sin, having taken hold on Adam, vitiated utterly the nature in which it lodged. And so it is sail that death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.* Death is never separable from sin. The participation, therefore, of a sinful nature, produces death as its necessary effect. Sin, having found entrance and lodgment in the nature of Adam, did not vacate the world at the death of the first transgressor. It remained in the nature which reproduced itself in Adam's seed. It was in the world (verse 13), antecedently to the Law.

Accordingly, the decisive fact of universal mortality is immediately cited (verse 14), in proof of the universal presence and prevalence of sin. "Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." The parties here contemplated are, as I think, first, the Gentiles generally, as never having been under Law, while Adam was expressly under Law: and, secondly, infant children, who constantly are found to die, though by their age incapable personally of actual offence.

(V. 12). The passage opens by tracing all the sorrows that have come into this world to one man — Adam. Through Adam's act of disobedience sin came into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all Adam's race. The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is of "sin" that the Apostle more especially speaks in this portion of the Epistle. In chapters 1, to 5:11, the word sin occurs but twice; in this division. 5:12 to 8, it occurs thirty-four times. "Sin" is the evil principle of "lawlessness", or the creature doing his own will. This evil principle entered the world. through Adam's one act of disobedience. Death followed as the penalty of sin. Sins can be forgiven; but "sin", the evil principle which leads to sins, can only be met by death that brings to an end the life governed by sin. Therefore the penalty of sin is death. Thus the death penalty passed upon all Adam's race. That all have come under the evil principle of sin is proved by the fact that all have sinned. The bad fruit shows the character of the tree. So the Apostle says, "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned".

As regards death, it is the penalty of sin. It was by sin that death came to Adam, but the death that came thus to him has passed on to his descendants. Involved in his moral ruin by his sin, deriving from him his fallen, sinful nature, to be righteously exempted from the death he brought in by sin, his children must establish a right to live. Not one has ever done this. They all sin, and so death justly passes to them. In the holy government of God it would be impossible to exempt from death the sinning children of Adam, although it is not their sinning that brought death into the world. It was brought into the world by the sin of Adam. It came in thus under the government of God as penalty for sin, and it necessarily passes to all that sin — which all do. Righteously, therefore, all die.