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.

Teens (left) used less of the prefrontal (upper) region than adults (right) when reading emotion.

This is a picture highlighting the fact that in an adolescent brain or a younger brain, the relative activation of the prefrontal region or this anterior front part of the brain is less than it is in the adults. But in contrast to that, the more emotional region or that gut response region has more activation compared to the adult. So the relationship between these two regions is very different. And we think that that's been a very important finding in terms of understanding adolescent behavior.

She said that one of the interesting outcomes of this study suggests that perhaps decision-making in teenagers is not what we thought. That is, they may not be as mature as we had originally thought. Just because they're physically mature, they may not appreciate the consequences or weigh information the same way as adults do. So we may be mistaken if we think that [although] somebody looks physically mature, their brain may in fact not be mature, and not weigh in the same way. ...

Certainly the data from this study would suggest that one of the things that teenagers seem to do is to respond more strongly with gut response than they do with evaluating the consequences of what they're doing. This would result in a more impulsive, more gut-oriented response in terms of behavior, so that they would be different than adults. They would be more spontaneous, and less inhibited. ..."

According to her view and the view of other medical scientist, a teenager, 13-19 is still in the process of developing the prefrontal lobe of the brain. This part of the brain influences our emotions to do the right thing in our decision making. This is the way God made us, and explains why he holds the age of accountability at twenty years. The prefrontal part of the brain must develop before we can make correct decisions.

In view of these findings and what the word of God says it dramatically changes the way we must view our teenage children, especially in view of their ability to determine and make correct decisions for themselves. God knew that they were incapable. How many times have I heard a parent say, in regard to one of their children, "they are big enough to make up their own minds about what they choose." The sad thing is that some of these kids are only 13 or 14 years old. The trouble with this kind of thinking is that we as parents are still responsible to correct and teach these children who think that they are grown. They cannot help the fact that their prefrontal lobe in their brains is still developing.

This explains why so many teenagers are killed in car wrecks showing off to their friends, or maybe angry at a girl friend they may drive a hundred miles an hour and end up killing themselves. All of this is simply poor judgement and the in-ability to make a correct decision because their brain is not developed yet, emotions rule over good sense and judgement. Yet we often times consider them grown up merely because of the view of others and the child’s physical appearance. We simply let them make decisions that they are not fully capable of making. Question: Since God sees them as being unaccountable to make correct decisions concerning right and wrong, how can we just simply turn them loose to make their own way while they are teenagers. It certainly shifts the burden of accountability to us as parents. It also causes us to reflect on the problems of teenagers today in our own society.

Our American government, today, because of the view of the National Education Association and others who determine how we should raise children would be wise to turn to God for the answers. If God said that a child is defined as being 19 years and younger, then he is. This would mean that sending boys to war who are not twenty years old is wrong. This is wrong because their minds are not developed yet. There are many other things that our children are not mentally able to make decisions about during those years.

Many groups like the ACLU are trying to make our children sexual active because they think that if the children are old enough to make babies that they are mature enough to make their own decisions about sex. The ACLU is trying to have the law changed to read that a child only has to be 13 years old to determine their own sexual conduct rather than at the age of 18, which according to the Bible is too young. If this law is changed then we as parents will no longer have the right to tell our own children, whose minds are not developed enough to make a realistic decision, that they cannot have sex and that with anyone they choose. It is disgusting. Children must be twenty years old to make that kind of a decision for themselves.

But children today have matured more than children back then? Think so?

Not according to scripture or medical science. What we have done is dress them up like adults put on lipstick and high heels and said, "boy they sure look grown up don’t they." This is a miserable thing that we have done to our children, may God have mercy on us.

Our children are so loved by our Savior and his grace is extended to them. It would appear from scripture that the age of accountability is 19 years of age, but we must still lead and direct our children to Jesus. Jesus said: "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Our children could go to heaven even though they don’t make that decision as a child but let us be warned. God has commanded us to lead these children and train them in the way of the Lord. I believe little children should be converted as early as they can receive it. We need a lot of Samuel's and Davids in our children. So it is up to us as parents to do what we can, if we do, he said that it would never depart from them.

There is one thing that we all must take into consideration and that is that the children of Israel were under a different covenant than we are. We are under a new Covenant with different promises. I would be afraid to try and sit in God's seat and say that anyone under 20 years old will go to Heaven if they die. Mainly, because I know that God knows the heart of man and it is up to Him to make that kind of decision. But, I do believe that God knows more than we do about our children. I also know that God is a righteous judge and that He would take into account a persons mental abilities to reason.

He said that we should train them up in the way that they should live and if we did they would never depart from the faith. He requires for us all to be born again by the Spirit. So as soon as we can get a child to Christ the better off they will be. The important thing to remember is that just because they look grown up doesn't mean that they are, they may need more guidance than what we think.

45 million unwanted children have been aborted in America since Roe vs. Wade. All of these have poured into heaven. It could be because God has allowed it to happen to keep them from having to be raised in our filthy society? These murderers will still be held accountable for the death of these little children but thank you God for your loving mercy in saving them.

Yours in Christ,
Tommie Spurgeon

Printer-Friendly version..