When we think or speak of “death”, it is usually physical death that we have in mind. Physical death is one of the portals of the soul. We suffer this death, because we are made of dust, just like our progenitor Adam who "was of the earth, made of dust" (1Co 15:47). God said to Adam, "You will return to the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen 3:19). Being procreated from Adam, we share his earthy nature, and follow him back to the dust. This will continue until the return of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. He will abolish physical death (1Co 15:26).
The Bible also speaks of three other deaths. These are deaths and states of the soul, not of the body.
(1) Death In Sin
Paul says, "I was once alive... then sin sprang to life, and I died" (Rom 7:9). When Paul says, "I died" he was in neither grave nor hell --he had died neither physical nor eternal death. But he had died a death of some kind because he said, "I died." He explains: "Through Adam sin entered the world, and through sin death passed to all men because all sinned"(Rom 5:12).
It is a timeless principle that "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23). God says to all, just as he said to Adam, "In the day you sin, you shall die" (Gen 2:17). Thus you may be "dead in your trespasses and sins" (Eph 2:1). These verses do not tell people, "Because you sin, you will die someday." People will, of course, suffer eternal death someday, if they do nothing about their sins. But Adam was not told, "If you sin, you will die someday" but rather "In the day that you sin you will surely die." The day one sins, one is "alienated from the life of God"(Eph 4:18).
(2) Eternal Death
In a vision, John saw portrayed the judgment day of mankind before the saints enter the new world. Both wicked and righteous were resurrected and judged. Anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into a lake of fire. "This is the second death" (Rev 20:12-15). Jesus had earlier said that those who overcome the tribulations of the Christian way, "will not be hurt at all by the second death" (Rev 2:11). This second death is the opposite of eternal life (Mtt 25:41,46). We usually call it Hell.
(3) Death To Sin
Paul tells Christians, "Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God" (Rom 6:11). This is the reversal of being dead in sin and alienated from the life of God. Death to sin is death of the sinful self. "We have been buried with Christ through baptism into death" (Rom 6:4). Baptism, obviously, does not bring us into physical death, eternal death, or death in sin. So the death we are "baptised into" is something else. When we go "through baptism into death... our old self is crucified with Christ" (Rom 6:6). Out of this death we are born again.
This death to sin brings us back into the life of God --from which we were cut off when we died in sin. "I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live... by faith in the Son of God who
loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). Those who, through faith and repentance, are baptised into Christ, are "dead to sin and alive to God"(Rom 6:11).
SOUL DIAGRAM