He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it - another of those pregnant sayings which our Lord so often reiterates (Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33; John 12:25). The pith of such paradoxical maxims depends on the double sense attached to the word "life" - a lower and a higher, the natural and the spiritual, the temporal and eternal. An entire sacrifice of the lower, with all its relationships and interests-or, which is the same thing, a willingness to make it-is indispensable to the preservation of the higher life; and he who cannot bring himself to surrender the one for the sake of the other shall eventually lose both.