When you get to Heaven, do you come as a … baby, kid, teen, grown up, old person?

That is a very interesting question! And, it’s also a very hard question to answer because we really don’t know! We can get an idea from reading the Holy Bible, but even then it is hard to know for sure.

Here’s what we do know: According to Paul, in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, our heavenly bodies will be very different from our natural earthly bodies. Our earthly bodies eventually die but our resurrected bodies cannot die. Also, our earthly bodies get old and weak but our resurrected bodies will be perfect!

Another big difference is that we will have a spiritual body rather than a natural body. That doesn’t mean we’ll be like ghosts just floating around; it means we will have a body like Jesus’ resurrected body (1 John 3:2). If you remember, after Jesus’ resurrection, He showed that He could be touched and that He could eat (Luke 24:37-43). We get a little bit of a glimpse of what our bodies will look like when we read Luke 9:28-36. Jesus went with three of His disciples up to a mountain. There he changed incredibly as His divine nature shone through His human nature. Moses and Elijah came from Heaven to talk to Him and their appearance was just as wonderful! In fact, the Bible says they, “appeared in glorious splendor” (Luke 9:30).

The Bible also says we will know each other. This tells us that somehow we will be recognizable. The Bible clearly shows that Jesus was recognizable after His resurrection (John 20:16, 20; John 21:12; 1 Corinthians 15:4-7) so that would lead us to believe we will somehow be recognizable in our new bodies. How that will be is uncertain. We may just know or we might look like our old selves; the Bible doesn’t really say.

Whatever our bodies look like and however we will able to recognize each other is an amazing mystery of Heaven. But, remember, Heaven is far more about God and far less about us, so maybe it won’t really matter anyway!

Where is Heaven?

Heaven is a real place - Jesus said so in John 14:1-3 when He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

Heaven is also known in the Bible as the “New Jerusalem” and it is an eternal city that is described beautifully and in-depth in Revelation 21 and 22. I think my favorite description is in Revelation 21:3-5 which reads, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new.'"

So, where is it exactly? No one really knows. It is beyond our Earth and beyond the universe. I know that is hard to imagine, but I just wanted you to know that no matter where it is, it is a real place and a place that has no sadness, no death, no mourning, no crying or no pain. We will have glorified bodies (and no one knows what those look like but we will know each other somehow) and we will be in the constant presence of God. Pretty exciting, huh?

If a baby dies at birth, how old will it be in heaven? Will it stay a baby and not know anything in heaven?

This is a set of big questions, and the answers are also big, so follow along with me.

First – how old will the baby be?

God is the Creator of everything – including time (and also matter, energy, space, relationships, intelligence, emotions, etc etc … really … everything.) And time helps us understand where we are in this physical world. Typically, we say we are in a place at a time. We have a place and a time where we are.

But that changes! God is outside of time, and eternity is outside of time. By “outside” of time I mean that you cannot measure it. Remember the beautiful song, “Amazing Grace”? Remember the words, "When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise Than when we'd first begun"?

Read on to understand a bit better what we will BE like in heaven…

Second – will it stay a baby?

The answer lies in understanding Jesus after his resurrection. Here we go …

Read Philippians 3:20-21 starting with “And we eagerly await….” What will Jesus transform? [to transform is to change the form of something]

Put you answer here: __________________________

What will Jesus transform the “our lowly bodies” into? To be like his what?

Put your answer here: __________________________

Our lowly bodies, that is, our earthly bodies, whether baby or adult, will be transformed to be like his heavenly body! Wow, huh?

Now go to 1 Corinthians and read chapter 15, verse 35 through the end of the chapter.
Pretty cool, huh?

Did you notice the key 44th verse? There is a natural body, the one we live in now, and there is a spiritual body, the one we will after our earthly death!

Right now you know by experience that life is much more than just our physical body, right? We have an intellect, we have emotions, we have relationships, and we have a spiritual part of our being. Sooooo … wanna know what a baby’s new spiritual body looks like?

Go back to 1 Corinthians 15:49. “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man [Paul is talking about the first created man, Adam], so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven [that is Jesus].

So the baby, and you, and me will all bear the likeness of Jesus after our earthly death.

So wanna know what Jesus looks like in his spiritual body? [If you don’t, just stop reading here, but if you do, keep reading …]

Go to the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. Read Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:3, and Luke 9:29. [The word “transfiguration” refers to Jesus’ appearance when the disciples saw him changed.]

What is wild, is that just as you have a physical body, so did Jesus. But when Jesus was transfigured, his disciples caught a glimpse of his spiritual body. We can’t know exactly what’s up with that body, and the disciples barely had words to describe it. We can’t really wrap our brains around what that new body will be like, but we do know that, “so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”

Third, will the baby know anything?

Follow me carefully now … while we see a little baby, helpless, limited in knowledge & strength & intelligence, this is not what God sees. God sees a perfectly and completely formed spiritual being! [This may also help you understand how God sees disabled people, poor people, widows, orphans, and – honestly – all the rest of us who just ain’t exactly “perfect!”]

The theologian C.S. Lewis said that you will NEVER look upon an ordinary person. ALL of God’s children (doesn’t matter how old) are EXTRAORDINARY because they all bear the image of our Creator!!

The Bible doesn’t speak specifically to babies in heaven, but the nature and character of God point to that baby as someone who also has a spiritual body and who will share in the blessings of heaven. Cool, huh?