One of the things that must be of great concern to Christian parents who love their children is the age of accountability. We know by instinct that there must be a time during the development of a child that God requires them to be held accountable for their sins. Some feel that it may be based on how rapid they mature others feel that it may be an actual age that God himself has established, what we call "the age of accountability."
I have been taught along with many others that the age of accountability was 12 years old. Most believing that this aligned with the fact that Jesus went into the temple and taught at the age of 12 years old. Others believe that because of the Jewish custom when a male child is 13 years old that there is a ceremony held at which time he begins to assume a certain responsibility. I have heard others teach that it could be any age it just depends on the child and how rapid they come to maturity, which would mean that it could be at any age in their childhood that they were able to determine right from wrong.
If we are to compare our children�s maturity parallel to the maturity of Jesus at twelve years of age we find our children somehow wanting in this view. Why? Because Jesus was God in the flesh, his maturity was way beyond what I was at the age of twelve and he was way beyond your maturity at the age of twelve. In fact there is no one in the whole world that is as mature as Jesus was at the time he was twelve years old. The main reason is the fact that God the Father directed and guided Jesus in a special way compared to our children. In him dwelled all the fullness of God bodily. Because of this His whole life was directed and guided by revelation from the Father. The normal child doesn�t fit this description.
If we were to base it on the time of the Jews at 13 years of age we would also find ourselves still wondering. Because most children don�t mature at the same age we find that thirteen years of age just doesn�t quite measure up. I am over sixty years of age at this present time but I can remember when I was sixteen years old, old enough to have a drivers license and driving my father�s car and how mixed up emotionally I was. I had moments when I wanted to be grown up and mature but at other times I longed to go play cowboys and Indians like I did just a few years before. I know that this is not unusual because at the age of sixteen a number of other boys and myself did something that most people wouldn�t want to admit to.
One day we were talking about how much fun it had been in the past to play guns. Now if you don�t know what that is, it is to play cowboys, sneaking around and hiding and playing like we are shooting each other. All in fun of course, and while thinking on this we decided to do it. We were sixteen and would be ashamed if anyone knew that we were playing cowboys so we loaded up into the car and drove out into the country into a large pasture with hills and trees and many places to hide and spent that afternoon playing cowboys. Of course at the end of the day we all vowed never to tell any of our friends that we had done this for fear of ridicule. To look at us in our height and stature some of us looked like grown men, but to assume that we were because of our appearance would have been a tragic mistake. So to view that at the age of thirteen a child is fully mature in decision making is not correct.
The question is; at what time or period in the lives of our children does God hold them responsible for the decisions they make? Believe it or not, the way we view God�s feelings on this subject has a tremendous affect on the way we raise our children. Did God set an age of accountability? The answer is yes and it is found in the Old Testament.
Surprisingly the age of accountability in this particular case was nineteen years old. While we view and meditate on what the Bible says about this there is something else to consider. We must consider that medical science also backs this up concerning the growth of the frontal lobe in the brain of a teenager.
To begin this study we should go back to the time that God was showing Moses particular ceremonies in the Tabernacle. One of these ceremonies was that of atonement and what is called ransom money for the men of Israel. Women and children were under the head of a household so only the men were required to be circumcised and to pay ransom money for their own souls. Women and children were sanctified by the head of the house and would not need to pay ransom money.
Exodus 30:
11: And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
12: When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
13: This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.
14: Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.
15: The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
16: And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
God commanded those who were twenty years old and above to pay a ransom for their souls because anyone nineteen years and below were consider by God to be children and were under the protective head of the household. If he was only nineteen he was not old enough to pay a ransom for his own soul, he was still covered under his father�s ransom.
God will confirm this again in two other places of scripture. I am a firm believer in the "two witness theory," which is that there should be at least two scriptures to verify any Bible teaching that we use. Otherwise it could just be our own conjecture.
God delivered Israel out of the bondage of Egypt taking them almost immediately to the Promised Land. In just a few weeks they had tempted God ten different times provoking him to anger. The straw that broke the camel�s back was when they refused to enter the Promised Land after all he had gone through to get them there. He had promised to deliver them and bring them to it, but it was up to them to obey his will and go in, they refused.
He decided to punish them by allowing them to die in the Wilderness. Israel was condemned to wander for the next forty years in the Wilderness while these people died. But God did not sentence everyone to die in the Wilderness. Along with Joshua, Caleb and their families he spared the children of those that had sinned against him. Anyone who was twenty years and older was condemned to die in the Wilderness because God held them accountable for their sin against him. But God in his mercy spared the children. Anyone who was nineteen years and under were spared and not held accountable because God saw them as children. Here are some of the scriptures to confirm this.
Num 14:29: Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,
We can tell that he would destroy those who were twenty and older and spare those who were nineteen years and younger but, how does this prove accountability? Maybe he just picked a random number to spare and went by that? Well let�s look in Deuteronomy and see what it says concerning their accountability.
Deu 1:39: Moreover 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.
This scripture is speaking of the same time that we just read about in Numbers 14:29. It is speaking of all Israel who was considered by the Lord to not be held accountable for the sins of Israel. In this verse he says because they had no knowledge between good and evil. This clearly shows us that in God�s view anyone who is under twenty years old is insufficient when it comes to making decisions about what is good and evil. He did not hold them accountable for themselves, but why so old? Nineteen years old, isn�t that stretching it a little bit? Before we are finished we will explain why, but God is telling us in these scriptures that a "child" is a person who is age 19 or younger.
In recent studies on the human brain they have made some amazing discoveries. One of these discoveries pertains to teenagers and the development of their brains. The physical development of the teenagers body seemed to tell us that they are almost adult but this fact can be very deceiving when it comes to the way we treat our children. Many young boys and girls at sixteen at often times are taller and bigger than their own parents which can cause us to think that they are a lot more mature than they really are. According to recent discoveries in medical science they have proven that the brain of a teenager, no matter how much they seem to mature in appearance, doesn�t completely develop until they are almost twenty years old. This occurs because of the development of the prefrontal lobe of the brain.
Deborah Yurgelun-Todd is the director of neuropsychology and cognitive neuroimaging at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. She says this:
"In an adult, the anterior or prefrontal part of the brain carries out a lot of executive functions, or what we call more thinking functions: planning, goal-directed behavior, judgment, insight. And we think that the prefrontal part of the brain influences the more emotional or gut part of the brain. Therefore this relationship is key to understanding teenage behavior.
And 19 or under??? That is completely ridiculous!!! That would mean that I I'm not saved then, since I was around 7 when I came to Christ. Children have an easier time understanding salvation a lot of times than adults do! And that passage from Exodus has absolutely nothing to do with the mythical age of accountability.
The Bible is very clear as to how someone can be saved and age is never listed as something that factors in there.
And actually, I'm fairly certain that 21 is the age at which the brain is done developing, though the "soft spot" seals up a little before that, I think. But seriously, that just doesn't have anything to do with it. If we were going to use that argument, we would also have to say that once people get over age 60 or so that they're also automatically saved because their brains have started to regress.
God is sovereign and He simply hasn't made everything absolutely clear to us in His Word. I think that we need to be VERY careful to not say that the Bible says things that, in fact, it doesn't actually say.
And those studies aren't that recent. People have a tendency to rediscover things and pretend like it's new knowledge or something. When I was in junior high and high school back in the 90s, all of our health textbooks included that bit about when the brain is finished developing.
And Jesus wouldn't have bothered dying if that was the case, since everyone would automatically be saved by the time they turn 20 anyway. That doesn't even make any sense logically!!! Seriously, does that even make sense that all children are born saved and then they lose their salvation once they turn 20??? It just doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible!!!
Oh my pixy...take a deep breath and let it out slowly.....in with the good out with the bad :-)
I found your post interesting. It does by implication as pixy pointed out bring up many other issues. One issue it brings to my mind is a short coming in modern society; namely we lack a ritual where a boy becomes a man, and end up with men who have never grown up...never stepped up received the mantle of manhood on their shoulders.
I believe a child has passed the 'age of accountability', something I don't believe in, once he or she is capable of making a faith decision for or against Christ. This can and will vary depending upon one's understanding of Christ and the Cross. You cannot place an "age" upon that.
(quote)"Anyone who was nineteen years and under were spared and not held accountable because God saw them as children. Here are some of the scriptures to confirm this."(end quote)
In Psalm 51:5, David wrote, �Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.�
David recognized that even at conception, he was a sinner. And it didn't matter that his father, Jesse, a righteous man, is mentioned in the genealogy of Christ, or that Isaiah speaks of Christ coming from the stem and roots of Jesse in 11:1-4.
I believe the age is relative to a person's understanding of sin and the requirements of God, but I don't really believe in a "age" either.
Deuteronomy 1:39 (King James Version)
39Moreover 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.
I think that knowing the difference between right and wrong is the "age".
