The bad news is indeed bad but please stay with me because the good news is far better than the bad is bad.

It is not news that when we are born into this world as infants, we have a body and we have a mind; this is what that old quote refers to as being born once and it is common to all of us. Additionally, you don’t need to be a college professor to know that all human beings die; again the old quote would consider this the first death and it is certainly risky and unwise for any of us to assume that we will bypass the grave on the way out of this world.

At this point in our consideration we all have one birth and one death. No rocket science here. It is the ‘second’ – birth and death – that give us pause for thought.

The term ‘second death’ is used four times in the Bible, each of them in the last book, Revelation. It is a term that is used to describe the end of those who have been born to this life (first birth) but never acknowledged their need for – or responsibility to God. ‘Second death’ is always a negative thought and is associated with a place of anguish and grief, a place the Bible calls Hell.

So then, anyone who is born only once (physically) will die twice (physically and spiritually). But what of the person that wishes to escape that judgment? Let's find out what God has to say about it?

In a conversation with Nicodemus, a religious leader of His day, Jesus told him something that he did not understand; "Except a man be born again (second birth), he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus asked how that was possible. "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?" (John 3) He thought that ‘born again’ meant that he had to once more become an infant. Jesus had to explain that He was talking about spiritual birth, not physical.

As I mentioned above, physical birth gives us a body and a mind. However, there is a third part to human beings – the Spirit – and Ephesians 2:1-7 tells us that when the body and mind are first born the spiritual dimension of man is dead. It is the spiritual aspect that must be given the life that it did not receive during physical and mental birth and that is the second birth or what God calls being "born again."

Jesus had a friend named Lazarus who had two sisters, Mary and Martha. After Lazarus died Jesus came to town and Martha began to pour her heart out to The Lord. Jesus spoke comfort by reminding her that he was the resurrection and the life and that those who believed in Him would never die. He obviously was not talking about physical death because His friend, Lazarus had just died.  What He was talking about is the spiritual part of us that would never end.

Interestingly, in other passages the Bible tells us something neat about people who trust in The Lord Jesus; it says that if we do die physically a time will come when our bodies will undergo a transformation and be reunited with our spirits. Therefore, it is not just the spiritual dimension that will live forever but our whole being (minus our sin nature, of course; and that is a good thing.)

So, the old quote makes a little more sense; "If you are only born once, you will die twice but if you are born twice you will only die once." Anyone who is born once (that’s all of us) is subject to dying physically; and since the spirit is stillborn and the sin-nature corrupts us we are all subject to spiritual death. But if a person has a new birth then the conditions that subject us to spiritual death change and we will only die once.

I hope this helps you to understand how birth and death are related. I don’t fully understand every aspect of the subject but what the Bible says about it is true and that we can depend on God’s honesty and integrity as he tells us truth.

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I said before that all die and basically that is true. God tells us in the Bible that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And "the wages of sin is death …" however, there are two people who left this world without dying and a whole group of people who will do so in the future. Soon we will place a link here to an article about them.

For more about what being born again means please see our Gospel page.