In Matthew 16 the Lord gave a very strong word to His disciples on how, if we are to reign with Him in the next age, we must not live our lives today for the pleasures of this age:

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what shall a man be profited if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall repay each one according to what he has practiced.”
— Matthew 16:25-27

As we shared in the previous Brief Note, the word for both “life” and “soul” in these verses is the same in Greek, psychē (Strong’s #5590). So, the Lord is saying here that if today we live for the pleasures of this age, we will “suffer the loss of our soul” in the next age, which will be the 1,000 year reign of Christ upon the earth (Rev. 20:4-6). But, if we are willing to forsake the world in this age to follow Christ, we will gain our soul during that age. (See “Suffering Loss to Gain Our Soul” • 2.)

Yet, what does it mean to actually “gain our soul”?

That is just what the Lord goes on to show His disciples in the next event Matthew records, which is the Lord being transformed on the mountain:

And after six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves. And He was transformed before them; and His face shone as the sun, and His garments became shining white, as the light.
— Matthew 17:1-2, SV

To understand how this relates to the gaining of the soul, we must realize that, besides the sister verse in Mark 9:2, the Greek word for “transformed” here, metamorphoō (Strong’s #3339), occurs in only two other verses in the New Testament.

(Unfortunately, this connection is lost in almost every major English version of the New Testament, because in both Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2 they wrongly translate this word as “transfigured.” This is a terrible mistake, and it greatly obscures the real significance of this passage; see the Brief Note, “‘Transfigured’ or ‘Transformed’”?)

And we shall consider what these two verses on “transformation” show us regarding the gaining of the soul in the next Note in this series.

For more on this topic see Watchman Nee’s book,
The Salvation of the Soul.

You can also listen to the current series of
The Christian Faith Podcast,
“The Judgment Seat of Christ.”

Sent to our mailing list on
—  2 September 2025 —