Age of Accountability

At what age is one accountable? There are numerous of passages that give insight into this question

Exodus 30:14 "Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD." 

Deuteronomy 1:39 "Moreover your little ones and your children, who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there; to them I will give it, and they shall possess it"

Deuteronomy 5:9-10 “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Numbers 14:28-29 "Say to them, 'As I live,' says the LORD, 'just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you: The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above."

Isaiah 7:16 “For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.”

Nehemiah 8:2-3 “So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month.”

Jonah 4:11 “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left…?”

There is clearly a point of discerning between good and evil.

Even our Lord Jesus could not discern evil from good un til he reached a certain age as stated in Isaiah;

Isaiah 7:14-16 "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings."

2 Corinthians 7:14 “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the (believing) wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the (believing) husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.”

 Basing it on the above scriptures, it would appear that one becomes accountable at the age of 20.

 

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