For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
All Commentaries on Matthew 16:25 Go To Matthew 16
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Then, because he had said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” Jesus makes a strict distinction between salvation and destruction. This was to prevent anyone from imagining the one destruction and the other salvation to be all the same thing in the last instance. The distance is infinite between destruction and salvation. Then he makes this inference once for all to establish these points: “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” Do you see how the wrongful preservation of life amounts to destruction and is worse than all destruction, as being even past remedy from the want of anything more to redeem it? The Gospel of Matthew, Homily
