What is the age of accountability?

[TonyChanYT]

The "age of accountability" concept is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Some think that there is a precise age at which a person becomes morally responsible before God.

Is the age of accountability a set age?

No, there isn't a precise age number for everyone.

Is it based on the individual?

I think so. It is between God and the individual.

There were some guidelines in Num 14:

26 And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 27“How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. 28 Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: 29your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward,

You were responsible if you were 20 years or older.

who have grumbled against me, 30 not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. 31 But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. 32 But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. 33 And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.

God punished the adults and parents for their unbelief. The little ones and the children were spared.

What is the age of accountability?

As a rule of thumb, people 20 and older are accountable for their belief in God. In actual cases, it could be younger or older than 20. It is between God and the individual's specific circumstances.

 

[Triumph1300]

It all depends on the person.

God knows.

The government seems to think it's around 20 years old.
The age for military service in most countries.
But of course most governments are evil organizations these days.
That's my take on it.

 

[Ronald David Bruno]

The "age of accountability" concept is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Some think that there is a precise age at which a person becomes morally responsible before God.

Is the age of accountability a set age?

No, there isn't a precise age number for everyone.

Is it based on the individual?

I think so. It is between God and the individual.

There were some guidelines in Num 14:


You were responsible if you were 20 years or older.


God punished the adults and parents for their unbelief. The little ones and the children were spared.

What is the age of accountability?

As a rule of thumb, people 20 and older are accountable for their belief in God. In actual cases, it could be younger or older than 20. It is between God and the individual's specific circumstances.

Children at a young age learn what is right and wrong; but certainly to understand the concept of God and sin needs more time. Moreso, the concept of Christ's sacrificial death on the cross requires a little more maturity ... 10 years old?
I read a psychiatrist's opinion on the matter. He said children cannot distinguish the difference between fantasy and reality until about 7-8. Not a rule, but interesting.
But certainly by the age of puberty, which is a recognizable physical change, one enters into a new phase, like a young tree takes a couple years before it can produce fruit; and so more is expected from this child. If a child gets to the age when they can procreate, I think God expects them to be accountable as well for just about everything else. A hundred years ago, a 15 year boy knew how to run his father's farm and do his business. They were certainly more mature. Some could handle a wife and children by 18 too. Now they say the average boy becomes a man at 30 years old.

 

[Jim C]

In Jewish society of biblical times, a boy is considered 'of age' at 13 and a girl at 12 (the age when the have their bar or bat mitzvahs)

 

[GRACE ambassador]

It all depends on the person.

God knows.

Amen! Our responsibility is not to be concerned with "what only God knows", but to:

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."​

(Proverbs 22:6 AV)​

​

Amen.

 

[Adrift]

In my opinion, I wasn't accountable until I was 19. Up until then, occasions for religious reflection eluded me. I went from High School straight into a war. My service in the Army served to sharpen my focus on the Bible.

 

[DJT_47]

No definitive age, like when the clock strikes 12 midnight on a specific day in your life, and the only guide we have is the Lord himself, being 12 years old when he began doing his father's work, Luke 2:42. Because there is no definitive age, and people mature at different rates, it's important to begin teaching children about the Lord as young as possible so they are brought up knowing God; that way, at the right time, whatever it is, that they believe and understand the importance of becoming a Christian and the process by which that happens, they can make the decision to become a child of God and be baptized into the body of Christ.

 

[Webers_Home]

.
According to Rom 5:12-21, when Adam tasted the forbidden fruit, his entire
posterity was instantly doomed to die regardless of age, race, gender, or
religious preference.

In other words: the sentence of death took place in Adam's time rather than
individually each in his own time, i.e. this isn't something his posterity
inherits, rather, it is something with which they were all slammed as one
man, all at the same time, back in the garden.

In point of fact, had not Jesus been executed, he would've eventually died of
some other cause even though he lived a perfectly innocent, sinless, life.
_