Two Kinds of Life: The Greeks had two words for "life" and both appear in the New Testament. One is bios from which we get "biology." It refers to biological and physical life. It is not true life but mere existence. This is life in terms of quantity and extension. Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, had this kind of life. He lived 969 years, but there is no record of any contribution he made to the welfare of society.

The other Greek word is zoe. It is used to denote true life, the quality of life. It is spiritual life with God as the source of life. While bios is temporal, zoe is eternal. The one deals with the body and the other with the soul. But this eternal life also has quantity, for it extends through eternity. To distinguish this type of life from the former, the New Testament uses "eternal life."

Two Kinds of Death: As there are two kinds of life, there are two kinds of death. The bios type of life ends in physical death. The body declines, deteriorates, and dies. This is in accord with the natural order, for all living things die, including Homo sapiens. If a human were only a physical body, the person would come to an end. In this case, death has the last word and is the ultimate victor over life.

There is another kind of death. The Bible speaks of death in terms of separation from God. "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). Sin is the dreadful agent that separates us from God. To be apart from God, from life, love, joy, and peace, is to be dead. Does this mean that the soul is exterminated or extinguished? If so, there would be a merciful nothingness. However, the Bible teaches that a soul apart from God, living in death, is in hell, a state of misery. Paul describes the condition in hell: "They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). As there is eternal life, there is also everlasting death. It is to save us from this fate that God gave his Son to die for us and to reinstate us with God in whom we have eternal life. The scriptures repeatedly assure us that God does not want a single soul to perish or to be lost or to go to hell. In Christ, God the Father gave his very self to prevent people from going to everlasting death.