If a baby dies and goes to heaven, does it grow up or stay a baby?

My mom asked me this one. And it works the other way too: if an old man dies and goes to heaven, does he get younger or stay an old man? The Bible doesn’t answer it straight out, so here’s what it does say, what it doesn’t, and what I think.

First, the baby is with the Lord

That part is settled. When David’s baby died, he said, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). A child who dies goes straight to God (see Why would God let a toddler die of cancer?).

Two different times

Right now, believers who have died are with the Lord without their bodies: “absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). The bodies come later, when Jesus comes back: “the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). So the question “what age will they be” is really about the resurrection body.

What Scripture says about the new body

It won’t wear out. “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43). It’ll be like Jesus’ body: He “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). “We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And it can’t die: “Neither can they die any more” (Luke 20:36). “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4).

What it doesn’t give is an age. There’s no verse that says “everyone will be thirty.”

What I think: everyone gets their prime

Since we get resurrected bodies, the old man gets his prime back. So it only makes sense for it to work the same way from the other side. The baby gets their prime too, or what their prime would have been.

The change happens all at once: “we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). God has done that before. Adam was never born and never a baby. God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), and right away Adam was working: God “put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). He named every animal (Genesis 2:19), and God brought him a wife (Genesis 2:22). That’s grown man stuff. Adam started out full grown, and Eve did too. God doesn’t need years to make someone grown.

Growing up over years looks a lot like this world to me, where things grow and then break down. Scripture says the new body is “raised in incorruption,” and God says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

The other view: they grow up there

Some good teachers see it differently. Randy Alcorn thinks babies may be raised as babies and grow up, because “I’m not sure God fast forwards and skips a stage of development.” He pictures parents who lost a child raising that child on the new earth. He agrees older people go back to their peak, only better. A pastor on TCT’s Ask the Pastor pointed out that Jesus comes back with an army of saints who are already grown, so if there’s growing up, it happens before then. Both of them say plainly it’s their best guess.

There are two things on their side worth knowing. Jesus grew up, and He never sinned: “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). So growing by itself didn’t come from the fall. And the new creation still has time in it, with a tree that “yielded her fruit every month” (Revelation 22:2). Growth there wouldn’t come with decay, because nothing there wears out.

What we know for sure

“The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us” (Deuteronomy 29:29). The age is one of the secret things. “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Here’s what’s revealed. The baby is with Jesus. Every believer gets a body that can’t get sick, get old, or die. We’ll be like Him. And the parents will see their child again.

Say it like this

“The Bible doesn’t give an age. It says the baby is with the Lord right now, and at the resurrection every believer gets a body that can’t get old or die. My take is the old man gets his prime back, and the baby gets the prime they would have grown into, in the twinkling of an eye. Some good teachers think babies grow up there instead. Either way, there’s no death and no tears, and those parents will see their baby again.”

Keep reading: Why would God let a toddler die of cancer? · If God is good, why is there suffering? · How do I actually get saved?