There are two kinds of life: physical and spiritual. In the original Greek of the New Testament, they are called bios and zoë. Bios is biological life, which is earthly and temporary. I was taught by my teacher — it’s the life your parents gave you, and it ends in death. But get ahold of this. Zoë is spiritual life. It’s life the way God has it, and it never ends. It is the supernatural, un-created, God-kind-of-life that comes only from Him; the Creator, the One who has no beginning or end.
In John 10:10, when Jesus said that he came to give us life, in the original Greek we find this word zoë. Jesus didn’t come to give us more bios. While he was in the earth, Jesus had a physical body just like us. But inside him was this invisible, powerful and unstoppable spiritual force. In him was this eternal life that he came to share with us.
Jesus, the Son of God, did not need to come down here and go to the cross to lay hold of eternal life for himself. He was already with the Father in Heaven. He came down here to give us this spiritual life he has. Christ died on a cross and was raised from the dead to give us this same kind of super-abundant, more than enough, fruitful, victorious, powerful, immortal, never-ending blessed life. You lay hold of it by faith.
This is what Jesus was talking about when he told Nicodemus: “…unless you are born again, you cannot be in God’s Kingdom.” (see John 3:3 NCV) But Nicodemus didn’t get it. He was thinking in terms of a person’s physical birth into this world, and he wondered how a person could be born again.
Jesus further explained this spiritual truth…
But Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born from water and the Spirit, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. Human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit.” (John 3:5,6 NCV)
Here, Jesus was speaking about the difference between physical life and spiritual life. Being born of water represents a physical birth, but being born of the Spirit represents spiritual birth, or “the new birth” as it is sometimes called. This is salvation.
In the Amplified it is written…
That which is born of the flesh is flesh [the physical is merely physical], and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised that I have told you, ‘You must be born again [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, sanctified].’ (John 3:6,7 Amplified)
When the Bible talks about being “born again” it is speaking about spiritual birth. And in the book of Revelation where it talks about the “second death” it’s referring to spiritual death. Spiritual death is eternal separation from God. This is the second death.
To better understand this new life that Christians have in Christ, I highly recommend reading The Two Kinds of Life by E.W. Kenyon. It’s an older book from our grandparents’ generation, but it is a treasure. And it is filled with revelation knowledge (knowledge that is revealed supernaturally).
Its publishers call it “an unveiling of a lost truth.” The first time I read it I found that at times I had to go back and re-read parts of it because I had no idea what the man had just said. I was a little like Nicodemus when I heard these things for the first time. In my head I didn’t quite get it, but in my spirit I knew that it was good and I wanted to hear more.