Do Babies Turn Into Angels?

Anyone who has ever attempted to cope with the loss of a child understands the impossible task they are challenged with. If you've found yourself checking into what I have to say, then it's safe to assume either you or someone you love has gone through this. One of the questions lingering is in regards to what happens to the child after they've passed away. 

The common answer is that the baby turns into an angel and that is the answer I want to filter through a biblical grid. 

1 Corinthians 6:2-4
2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? 4 So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church?

When Paul is writing to the Corinthians here I realize he's not laying out what happens to human beings when they die or answering the question I am trying to answer. The context is different but one of the truths he sets forth can help us. 

Paul clearly says we (and by we he means Believers) will judge angels. Not while on earth in our mortal bodies but in Heaven in our glorified bodies.  Why is this relevant? If babies turn into angels when they pass away, then they are still subject to judgment. That is not altogether encouraging news. Angels and humans are different. Angels and glorified believers are also different. 

But that's wholly irrelevant if people don't turn into angels in the first place. The question we really need to ask is, "do babies turn into angels when they die?" There is no biblical basis on which anyone could answer that in the affirmative.  From the evidence we have in Scripture about angels we only see that they were created spiritual beings who existed prior to humans and that they do not die nor do they reproduce (Luke 20:35-37). 

I think it's relevant that they never reproduce because that strongly implies that all the angels God ever wanted were made the moment He made them. That means that from the moment they were created until the fallen angels are cast into the Lake of Fire that number will not change. If there were 90,000 (random number that's easy to work with) angels to start with and 30,000 rebelled, then there will be 90,000 until the 30,000 are thrown into the Lake of Fire. 

Perhaps the primary purpose of angels as seen from Genesis-Revelation is to decisively end battles. Go to biblegateway.com and type in angel(s) and see if that doesn't change your mind about angels. I think if we factor in a comprehensive understanding of angels it may make the notion of young humans becoming angels a little less romantic. And imagine if you were to believe your child became an angel and then you read all about what the angels did throughout the Old Testament and what they will do during the end times.  

What does all this mean, then? How can we apply our knowledge about angels? 
When someone close to you loses a child should you then correct their understanding? 
If someone says, "God needed another tiny angel so He brought up my child," should you explain to them that their child has not morphed into an angel? 

As always we need to be tender and sensitive and weep with those who weep. Those are the precise instances where you're going to need to pray to God and ask for help to be clear, confident and courageous in the words you use. I don't think lying by affirming a fictional metamorphosis is the Christian thing to do but I also understand engaging them in a doctrinal debate is maybe not appropriate either. Affirm what is true. Speak what is true. 

I am of the firm conviction that God is sovereign over every single thing that happens. Nothing can happen without God either enacting it or allowing it. Not one thing. If something could happen outside of that, then He would not be God. The God of the Bible (the only God there is, by the way) is omnipotent and omniscient. He's all-powerful and all-knowing. Those traits by themselves aren't that great until we add that God is good. Though God is all-powerful there is some things He cannot do. God cannot lie and He cannot do anything contrary to His nature. After you finish this do a word study on promises so you get a glimpse of the concrete hope Believers have and why God's inability to lie is so vital to that hope. But before that let's consider God's nature and His inability to contradict that nature and why that is comforting when we evaluate the question of whether or not children turn into angels...

The question, of course, is not really about children turning into angels. The question is about why God allows children to die, right? Thinking they turn into angels is comforting but it's nothing more than sticking gum on the side of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. 

I don't know why God does that. I have no idea why God allows children to die. I don't know why children don't make it out of the womb. I don't know why they die suddenly in the middle of the night, or why they have an allergic reaction, or why they have bad hearts. I don't know why God does much of what He does - whether they are things I like or dislike. 

What I do know:
-Sin entered the world and screwed it up significantly more than any of us would ever acknowledge. Every single thing is in a fallen state. Our minds. Our bodies. Our planet. Our relationships. It's all corrupted by sin. 
-I also know that God is just and that God is love and God is gracious and God is merciful and God is uniquely that way toward children (those whom He has called innocents).