Matthew 16:25 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Whosoever will save his life,... whosoever will lose his life.... — There is a subtle distinction between the two clauses in the Greek which the English fails to represent. “Whoso ever willeth — i.e., wishes — to save his life” (the construction being the same as in Matthew 16:24) in the first clause, “Whosoever shall lose his life” in the second. It is as though it was felt that no man could wish to lose his life for the sake of losing it, though he might be ready, if called on, to surrender it. The word rendered “life” is the same as “the soul” of the next verse. For the most part, it means the former rather than the latter with its modern associations, and is never used as a simple equivalent for the spirit of man as the heir of immortality. Strictly speaking, it is the animating principle of the natural as distinguished from the spiritual life. Man, in the fuller trichotomy of the New Testament, consists of “body, soul, and spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), the soul being the connecting-link between the other two. The truth is, of course, put in the form of a paradox, and hence, with a contrast between the two aspects of the soul, or psyche. To be bent on saving it in its relation to the body, is to lose it in its relation to the higher life of spirit; to be content to part with it in its lower aspect, is to gain it back again in the higher.