Why does God allow young people to 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.

That is what God has sometimes to do with His children. Their sin is a sin unto death. God removes them from earth (the place they are not fit for) to heaven (the place that, through the blood of Jesus, they are fit for).

When God takes away one of His own by death it is not always in judgment. This is seen when God took away the son of king Jeroboam, “because in him there” was “found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel” (1 Kings 13:13). God, in His goodness, took away the lad from the evil to come. It was God’s severity to the wicked Jeroboam, but His goodness towards his son.

God no doubt allowed those to be slain upon whom the tower of Siloam fell (Luke 13:4), and it was a warning for others to be ready when death came, a readiness that comes with repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. Many innocent women and children have perished in the wars of mankind, and many questions regarding this may rise in the mind, but the Christian knows that all God’s ways are perfect, and that the judge of all the earth is righteous in all His acts and ways.

The life derived from Adam—the life of flesh—cannot be continued. It must be brought to an end, “On the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17), and “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). As long as man lives in the flesh, so long shall he be dominated by sin (Rom. 8:8), and because of this God is compelled to put an end to such a sinful existence. It is clear that such a state of existence could not be, by a righteous and beneficent Creator, allowed to continue for ever.

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).

Here it is the Father's will which He has come to carry out, and it is not the Father's will that one of these little ones should perish. How sweet and perfect an assurance! It is only the contrary will of man that hinders his salvation: on God's part there can be no contrary one: "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." Thus the little ones removed from us by death we may trust confidently to the divine love which waits on them. Our assurance as to them is rooted in the unchangeableness of the divine nature.

We believe that Matthew 18:10-14 furnishes the foundation of the precious truth of the salvation of infants. Do you not believe this? Are you not fully persuaded that all who die in infancy are saved? That inasmuch as their little bodies undergo the penalty of Adam's sin, their precious souls partake of the benefit of Christ's atonement! Well, if you believe this, why should your heart be troubled as to the destiny of your infant child in the event of the Lord's coming? Can you not fully trust that blessed One who, in the days of His flesh, said with such touching tenderness, “Suffer the little children to come to Me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God?” Can your heart entertain for a moment the unworthy thought that your gracious Lord, when He comes for His people, could take the mother to be with Himself and leave her babe behind to perish?

We desire again to hear of dear Baby. I fear that she must be an object of some painful solicitude to you and dearest sister, but you will both learn, I am sure, by the effectual teaching of God Himself, to repose your little darling in the arms of the Lord. The sufferings of an infant deeply present the sinfulness of sin to us. We are ready to say, 'What hath sin wrought?' but you remember those comforting and, I believe, sound words, 'They die, for Adam sinned; they live, for Jesus died.'

He suffered for righteousness, and He suffered for sin; but, besides this, He entered, as taking by grace a place among the godly remnant in Israel, into all which that remnant would feel as seeing the state of Israel (of which they were actually part) under the chastening hand of God for sin. All this He felt as none else could feel. His sympathy is as perfect now, though no longer passing through the sorrows by which He gained the experience of it. Besides, it is only in the part which has to be broken and corrected that we suffer; a touched affection, when Christ is with us in the grief, is of infinite sweetness, though the sweetness of sorrow. It is only when the will mixes itself up with the sorrow that there is any bitterness in it, or pain in which Christ is not. But then this is all useful and what we need. The Lord takes your dear babe to heaven (certainly he has no loss): what is the rest of God's dealings in it with us - with one's heart? He who has made a mother's feelings knows what they are - knows what He has wounded, and knows why - has a purpose of love in it. There is a mass of things in the sincerest of us of which we are not aware, which are not brought into subjection to God, which work and shew themselves unsuspected. God breaks in upon us; how many things He shews - how many cords He cuts at one blow! A whole system of affections is touched: we feel that death has its place and part in them. I never saw a family the same thing after the first death that it was before. There was a breach in the circle. What belonged to the whole body of affections and life of this world was touched, was found to be - mortal: it was struck in its very nature. The course of life went on; the wave had closed over that which had been cast into it; but death, and the affections which belong to this world, had been found to meet. But all this is well; for death is come in. Besides we live in these things; our will lives in them; and when the will is broken, so far as it is so, it is broken for everything. We learn much more to lean on what never breaks - not to lose our affections, but to have them more in connection with Christ, less with this will of our own nature; for nature must now die as well as sin. But then Christ never makes a breach, except to come in and connect the soul and heart more with Himself; and it is worth all the sorrow that ever was, and more, to learn the least atom more of His love and of Himself; and there is nothing like that, nothing like Him; and it lasts.