You see, life isn't just chemicals. If it were, you could take a recently dead organism and get it to live again, simply by jump-starting the molecules somehow.
You're doing ok so far...
But that doesn't work, does it?
A more accurate answer would be that we haven't found a way of doing it yet - "doesn't work" sounds a little too close to "it's impossible" in my book, and that's quite an assertion to make. Besides, we can at least do some interesting things with defibrilators, and then there's all that unicellular stuff that David B mentioned.
Instead, we know that life is something apart from the chemicals; something somehow imposed on them which uses them but is not them.
Um, no. You were right the first time, go back. Besides, one can build functioning computer simulations of organic life, so either there are no such intangible elements required for life to exist, or they come along automatically if only you build and set the physical components in motion. I think I'll go with Occam on that one, barring further evidence.