There are many instances in the bible where men have died twice. Lazarus is the prime example. This text is referring to a man dying once spiritually and being born again and after that sin will beget judgement as sons.
Let us consider scripture.
One can see that the disciples had knowledge of something we do not recognize. How can a man sin before he was born? Jesus did not rebuke them for saying this. He just said in this instance neither did this man sin or his parents.
The conclusion can only be that to have sinned before he was born the man must have lived before.
We are faced constantly with the problem of what is seen as an unjust God. Children being born blind, deaf and with all manner of disabilities. Good people being struck down in accidents etc.
God is just.
I have often thought how can I ever get to be like Jesus by the end of my life?
At the end of ones life we enter into the presence of God, the refining fire — Hebrews 12:29. All the dross within us is burned and only that which is born of Christ remains.
Where is the house of the Lord?
Job testifies:
There is only ONE Spirit which gives life to all. Without it, there is no life, no one lives apart from God since God is THE ALL. He is the Universe and all that is beyond and all life within it. He is you and me too. For in Him we live and move and have our being — Acts 17:28. Jesus is the WORD that came forth from God. They were ONE in the beginning. God gave the word and the word created everything that is. You and me are part of that word. Time itself is an illusion to facilitate learning. Where you were once one (with God in spirit) you became two (spirit and soul) and ALL souls are older than the Universe itself. In the end (your end), you become one again with God (Ecclesiastes 12:7 — and the spirit will return to God who gave it) and your experiences become one again in Him written in the book of life. So it is with all creation. There is only ONE being in the Universe. ONE Holy Spirit. God is LOVE. God is ALL. God is ONE. Matter is an illusion and so is body and time. Mind is your consciousness and free will. Soul is the collection of your individual experiences (multifaceted over many potential lifetimes) and some might say “personality”. Spirit is your life force and is always ONE with God. So we begin as ONE, so we end as ONE and so the cycles continue. If you are merely “created” at some point, you will be destroyed at another point because in the end there is only ONE who stands, the Omega. God is the Alpha and the Omega. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness perceives it not. Let he who has ears to hear and eyes to see, do so (the very statement so often uttered by Jesus speaks of spiritual growth; until you are advanced enough to comprehend what is said for what it is, you will not see or hear what is meant, only what is said on the surface. You cannot accept that which you are not ready to see).
Hell is what you create in your heart and where you’ll judge yourself to be if that is where you belong and it will be you that pardons yourself to move on from there as well since you are your own judge. For Jesus said the Kingdom is within you and whether that kingdom is heaven or hell is up to you. Those that need to come back to grow further do so — in fact you desire to do so. It is no great mystery. God compels no one. You choose to grow yourself and you plan the life ahead of you with God. You choose the course with God and you are free to move within that course here, but you are stuck with that course throughout this lifetime. If you fail to complete the course, you desire to repeat a similar course until you pass or else you would not progress.
All are born with that light of Jesus whether it is acknowledged or not. Those that do not accept the light live in darkness and will choose the life they desire. Nevertheless they still live according to the cosmic laws:
In many instances we see people flaunting God’s laws and seemingly getting away with it.
We see the meaning of the disciples’ question “has this man sinned that he was born blind?” They clearly understood that the disability in the man's life had to be the result of disobedience to cosmic laws and Jesus didn’t contradict. For an individual that has not acknowledged Jesus in his lifetime is subject to cosmic law when entering into the presence of God; all that is sometimes left is that light he received when he entered the world — he has to start to rebuild on that foundation. He will again be faced with the question: what will you do with Jesus?
For those of us that have received Jesus and have been born again, any wrong doing against our fellow man is written in the book of life and as children of God have access to these records about ourselves. We are our own Judge and are able to choose how we make amends and what circumstances we need to grow and change from glory into glory to become more like Him who died for us.
In the age of the Roman Empire, church and empire increasingly worked together to define what counted as true belief. The Council of Nicea in 325 AD, under the Emperor Constantine, was a major step in that direction. It was as much about unity and power as about pure theology. Men gathered under imperial leadership to settle what the empire’s church would teach — above all the nature of Christ, the Creed, and order in a divided church. In that sense it was a political meeting as well as a religious one: one state-backed orthodoxy for a broken empire.
What Nicea did not do is what popular stories sometimes claim. It did not compile the Bible, and it did not pass a decree against reincarnation. The list of New Testament books grew over a longer period. The arguments about the soul, its origin, and whether life is one journey or many ran through the early centuries in another stream of debate.
Some Christian thinkers, especially in the Origenist tradition, explored the pre-existence of souls and related ideas — that the soul is older than this earthly life and that God’s purposes for a person are not finished in a single short span. Other early writers firmly rejected the transmigration of souls from body to body. Mainstream orthodoxy settled against reincarnation. Later, in the sixth century, imperial and church controversy (notably around 553 AD) condemned speculative Origenist teachings. The important point is not a single “cut” at Nicea, but a long process: the Church moved toward one life, one judgment as the official line, while ideas of many journeys were pushed to the margins.
Why does that matter? If a people believe the soul has only one chance, then fear of eternal damnation becomes a powerful tool of control. If a people believe they are under cosmic law — that what a man sows he reaps — and that growth continues until we are conformed to the image of the Son, then authority cannot so easily replace the work of the Spirit within. Whether one uses the word reincarnation or speaks of predestination, refining fire, and glory to glory, the question remains the same: does salvation become a subscription to an institution, or a living walk with God?
When other voices were labelled heresy and pushed aside, it became easier for the faithful to look only to a central authority to speak to the Divine for them. Yet scripture still points us inward as well as upward. We are not released from the Church’s witness, but neither are we unplugged from the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.