Articles
“Born Once, Die Twice. Born Twice, Die Once.”
The title of this article is a quotation from Martin Luther. He wrote it in the margin of his famous Martin Luther Bible, a Bible he translated into German and published in 1534. Though Martin Luther was certainly mistaken in many of his beliefs, his phrase here is accurate and intriguing. The Bible speaks of life and death in two ways. Physical and spiritual. Physical life is given to all creation by the breath of God breathed into our bodies (Genesis 2:7), and it is taken when that breath leaves the body and returns to the God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Practically speaking, we receive physical life when we are born, and we lose it when we die. Therefore, physical life is fleeting and temporary. Spiritual life was also given to us by God’s breath in the form of a soul, and refers to the eternal part of us which lives beyond the physical life of our bodies (Isaiah 42:5).
In the beginning, Adam and Eve had both eternal physical life and eternal spiritual life. They didn’t fully grasp what God meant when He warned them about the tree of knowledge of good and evil: "In the day you eat of it, you will surely die" (Gen. 2:17). When they ate of the tree and sinned, death entered the world. Not only physical death, but spiritual death. Man would no longer live forever physically: "...to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19c). Man would no longer live spiritually: "God stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life." (Gen. 3:24b). Before we jump Adam and Eve, let’s remember that we perpetuate death in the world by our own sin (Romans 5:12). Sin brings physical death and, far worse, it brings the spiritual death of being separated from God forever. Our physical death represents our first death, but afterwards the Bible calls our spiritual death in Hell "the second death" (Revelation 20:14-15).
As awful as that sounds, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ died and resurrected to restore our spiritual life! He has the words of eternal life (John 6:63), and if we place obedient faith in Him we can be spiritually resurrected from the dead (Romans 6:4; Eph. 2:4-5)! The Bible calls this being "born again" (John 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:3). John wrote that for those who are born again and remain faithful, the "second death" has no power (Rev. 20:6)! All of us are born at least once and all of us die at least once. However, if we’re not born again in Christ, we’ll die twice: first physically, and then spiritually in the second death away from God eternally in Hell. On the other hand, if we’re born twice, first physically and then spiritually, we’ll only die once, untouched by the second death! In short, if we’re only born once, we’ll die both physically and spiritually. If we’re born twice, we’ll still die physically, but we’ll live on spiritually with God in Heaven forever! "Born once, die twice. Born twice, die once."
