I was first exposed to the teaching regarding the coming reward and discipline of the believers when I read Watchman Nee’s book, The Salvation of the Soul, which of course takes its title from the verse above. This was less than a year after I was first saved; the dear brother who brought me to the Lord very much appreciated Brother Nee’s ministry and introduced me to his books, and I too appreciated his ministry. But I remember, when I came to this particular book, thinking, “As much as I have been helped by Brother Nee’s sharing, I don’t take this part of what he says; I don’t agree with what he says here.”

The reason was, I had already been strongly grounded in the “once saved, always saved” view of salvation, so I could not see the other, balancing side of the truth: that we are also “being saved,” as we have stressed in this series of Notes, “Once Saved, Always Saved, & Being Saved.”

That is, even though we as the believers in Christ have already had our sins forgiven, we will still need to answer to the Lord, at the judgment seat of Christ, for how we lived our Christian life (2 Cor. 5:10). So, even though I did not have any Bible verses I could use to counter what Brother Nee was sharing, still, I just would not accept it.

I’m pretty sure many believers today have the same kind of response when they first encounter ministry along this line.

Fortunately, before too long I did begin to consider, before the Lord and in His Word, this matter, and eventually came to see that what Brother Nee shared in that book was absolutely according to the truth of the New Testament. And of course, a number of others have taught along this line as well, some of the main ones being Robert Govett and G.H. Pember in the 19th century, and D.M Panton and Witness Lee in the 20th century.

In his book, Brother Nee stresses the difference between the salvation of the spirit and the salvation of the soul. He refers to the word the Lord spoke after Peter sought to keep Him from going to the cross. After noting that this word was spoken “to His disciples,” Brother Nee comments,

By this we know that the following words which the Lord Jesus utters are spoken to his disciples and not to outsiders. If disciples, then they are saved ones. Let us therefore keep in mind that the words which follow are directed at saved saints, not unsaved sinners.

And here is what the Lord said:

Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me; for whoever would save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake shall 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 16:24-27

In this passage, the words “life” and “soul” are both translations of the same Greek word, psychē (Strong’s #5590). So, the Lord here is really speaking of our need to be being willing to “lose our soul” in this present age, so we may gain it in the next. Of course, Peter heard the Lord speak this word, and this is the very “salvation of the soul” the apostle would later speak of himself in his first epistle.

In the next Note in this series we will consider the difference between the salvation of the spirit and the salvation of the soul.

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— 13 June 2026 —