If life is a mixture of some chemicals (non-living), how can chemicals create life? What is the difference between living and non-living?

There is a subject called Biochemistry, which deals with the chemicals that are involved in the maintenance of life. Basically, there are some chemicals that can replicate themselves with the help of other chemicals. We call this replicating chemical DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) and it is the basic unit of life, just as an atom is the basic unit of a metal. This chemical - DNA - does not strictly behave as 'life' does. However, it can carry out the most important function needed for sustained life - reproduction of itself. Now this chemical - DNA - has another interesting function. It can react with many different chemicals to form a special type of chemical called a protein. A protein is special because it is a chemical that can perform an enormous number of functions. Many different types of proteins assemble to form a very highly organized structure, called a cell. A bacterium, for example, consists of a single cell and it also performs the other basic functions of 'life' - it eats, excretes, needs energy for survival, and of course, reproduces. Cells like these can form large clusters to help each other live longer. Often, these large clusters of cells perform the same function. Such an organized cluster of cells is called a tissue. When tissues of the same type are organized to perform similar functions, they form an organ. Different organs act in co-operation to give rise to an individual. This is probably 'life' as you know it. So the basic difference between living and non-living is that living things can reproduce. When you break down living things till the thing can no longer be called alive, you get non-living chemicals. Hope this helped in clearing your confusion.

The study of origin of life from simple chemicals is called abiogenesis. See

There are a number of definitions of life in biology, but none of them depend on what "life" is made of (except I guess when people say life must be made of cells). Instead, "living" is a description of the behavior of a system. The most commonly taught definition of a living system is one that can regulate itself, respond to its environment, convert energy and reproduce. There are a few more aspects that seem to be more contentious, but in all cases, the definitions are based on the behavior of a system, not its makeup. For example, some mathematical systems also exhibit characteristics of a "living system" - the most famous being probably Conway's Game of Life. Here the "life" isn't even made of chemicals, just configurations of a cellular automaton.

You've just committed a classic example of the fallacy of composition. The fact that chemicals are nonliving does not imply that beings composed entirely of chemicals are also nonliving.

There is no hard definition of what it means to be living. Every time people try to define it, confusing counter-examples appear. Fore example, fure consumes "food", reproduces, can die. Why is fire not living. Life is an emergent phenomenon, like civilisation, forests, and justice. You cannot isolate the components that make any of these: they are a complex of components arranged in a particular way. Of course, you can see the extremes: an empty expanse is not a forest, while the Amazon basin is, but how many trees does it take to become a forest? And if you specify a number, does it matter if they are saplings? Or seedlings. If you can produce a precise definition of what is living and not living, your question may be answerable. But I don't think you can.

What's the difference between a running and non running engine? It has all the same materials but one moment it's accomplishing things and next it's just sitting there cold and dead. (The only real difference between a living cell and running car engine is the size and level of complexity) The truth is that there is a fine line between a running engine and a non running one and it's all about the right balance for the machine. Too much gas and it will die, too little and it will die. That's the thing with something that is based on a loop. With just the first spark of energy it can start a loop of a processes which provide its own spark of energy but because it is a feedback loop it must maintain a careful balance or the next loop cannot complete and the whole thing stops. You can't just have the chemicals and the parts, you have to have the just right chemicals in just the right place at just the right time with the just right energy or the whole thing stops.

"Life" is not a mixture of chemicals, it is something that uses and organizes chemicals to create life forms, through which to live. Biochemistry studies this phenomena and sometimes mistakes the effect for the cause. Chemicals do not create "life".

I think the best insight I can offer is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy, or negative entropy.  I explains how matter scales up into life in a fundamental, entirely nonspecific way.  Some use it to argue for a teleology.

You have this question completely back to front.  Because chemicals do not make life, life makes chemicals, and the chemicals so made auditioned for roles within the system we call life. Outside of the context of the drama that they present, these actors revert to anonymous  civilians in the chemistry catalogues of molecular society. It is no longer fashionable to refer to the abstraction of life as being a "vital force" or "essence", instead we prefer words like "system" for this abstract intuition.  An important difference is not what we name it, but what we deduce from its nature. Or rather what we do not deduce. We no longer consider that the vitality of life can be represented or extracted separately.  When electricity was discovered, and found to have an dramatic effect on living organisms, there was much excitement that this could indeed be such as essence, a fluid of vital force,  but such was not to be. The alchemists strove also to "distill" the "spirit" of plant materials, and such spirit indeed had a mind altering effect on those that would imbibe it, but again, this only added to the mystery. It was long believed that those chemicals that derived from living organisms must possess some aspect of "vital force", especially as these substances could not be manufactured by chemists. But this entire philosophy was dashed when Wohler synthesised urea by purely chemical means from non living precursor materials, and thus put an end to the "organic" mysticism surrounding biologically derived materials. Today we simply call organic that which contains carbon. The word of course is still in use as a marketing device for particular growing methods and still carries mystical connotations in the popular imagination, which marketeers are ever happy to exploit.