This week in the news, a young man drag-racing plowed through a stop sign and hit a car. The driver was killed instantly, and the children subsequently burned to death.

Also this week, grandmother asked me a question the other day. She had listened to the radio broadcast of a prominent and reliable minister preach from 1 Corinthians 7:14: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy."

The minister concluded that children are held accountable and doomed for their sins of their father. The grandmother could not see this as true to the loving God she has come to know.

I agree. But it's more than the emotion and total love I feel for God that brings me to this conclusion. As always, I go back to the Word.

In Ezekiel 18:20 we read, "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor shall the father bear the guilt of the son."

This tells us that children do not inherit sin from their parents, grandparents, or any of their forefathers. Each person is responsible for his own sins. It says, "The soul who sins shall die," not the soul who inherits sin.

And what is sin? We read in I John 3:4: "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness: and sin is lawlessness." We do not inherit sin, we commit sin. And we commit sin when we commit lawlessness. An infant has not broken any law of God and thus has not committed any sin. Ezekiel 28:15 tells us: "You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you." And James 4:17 says, "Therefore to him who knows to do good, and does not do it, to him it is sin."

There are lots of theological issues I still have questions about, but this isn't one of them. This grandmother needs only to picture Jesus in Matthew 18:3 when He brought children to Him and said, "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."

No one but God knows if the mother who was killed in the accident this week is in heaven today, but we do know where the children are. Little ones are on their way to heaven, no matter what their ancestors have done.

It's our job to be just as pure (through forgiveness) and heaven-bound.