Can someone with dementia come to saving faith?

Of course. The same is true of those with severe mental handicaps, those who are yet within their mothers’ wombs, and the very young. Each of these people will have the same struggle everyone else does- they’re sinners. By nature they are at enmity with God. They are all dead in their trespasses and sins, just like those with dementia. They are inclined away from Christ, as we all once were. A person’s ability to remember things, or their level of native intelligence has precious little to do with it for one simple reason- what is lacking is rebirth.

It is true enough that there is content to our faith. Saving faith isn’t an amorphous affirmation of some blob of non-information. We are saved by a faith in a person, Jesus Christ, and all that He accomplished for us two thousand years ago. Those of us who believe in election also need to beware embracing the heresy of justification by election. All the elect, and only the elect will be given the gift of faith (John 6:44). But the ground of our salvation is the work of Christ which is appropriated by faith in Christ. We are not justified by election.

I don’t pretend to know all the various kinds and levels of mental impairment. I did raise a daughter who was never able to speak a word. Recently I had the privilege of serving beside a brother as he preached Christ to his mother whose dementia was sufficiently advanced that she frequently thought her son was her long dead husband. She is a bright-eyed and chatty woman. She wasn’t, however, strong in following a line of reasoning. She did, I’m happy to report, acknowledge her sins, her need for God’s grace in Christ, and her conviction that He suffered for Her sins, redeeming her and making her a daughter of the Father.

She may not remember that event. But, He does. He knows what He wrought in her heart, and knows what He has promised in Jesus. The God who brought the entire universe from nothing, who commanded, “Let there be light” and there was light, is more than able to bring life from death. He is more than able to overcome our darkened hearts. Our feeble minds are not an obstacle to Him.

My friend, a faithful son of both his mother and His heavenly Father, didn’t hesitate to bring the gospel to bear. He gently pressed upon his mother the reality of her sin, and the fulness of the sacrifice of Christ. And she responded. Be skeptical all you like. But beware thinking you were smart enough to come to Jesus. Do not lose sight of the fact that if we do not come as children we can not enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 18:3). If you have a loved one with diminished capacity, do not lose hope in the grace of God. And all of us must never believe that anyone still alive is beyond the power of His grace. No living human will enter the kingdom apart from faith in the work of Christ alone. No living human, however, is beyond being blessed with that faith.