After the Lord rebuked Peter for telling Him He should not go to the cross, He gave all of His disciples, both then and now, a very clear word regarding what it means to follow Him. In brief, He shows us that any who would follow Him must take the way of the cross; only then can we experience the salvation of the soul. Otherwise, as He says, we might “lose” our soul:

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me;

25 For whoever would save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.

26 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?

27 For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then shall He repay each one according to what he has practiced.

To be clear, according to verse 24, this word is spoken to the disciples, not to the unbelievers. In verse 25 the Lord says these disciples might lose their “life,” that is, their “soul.” (It is the same word in Greek.) And in verse 26 the Lord tells us these ones may “suffer the loss” of their own soul. According to verse 27, this will take place when the Lord returns to “repay” (RcV, RSV, NASB, ESV, LSB), or “reward” (KJV, YLT, NKJV, NIV, NET), or “render to” (Darby, ASV) each one “according to what he has practiced.”

So, what does it mean to say that a disciple, a genuine believer in Christ, might “lose his soul”?

We know the Lord is not speaking here of eternal damnation; His believers can never be “lost” in that regard (John 5:24). Rather, here “losing the soul” refers to whether the 1,000 year reign of Christ on the earth, which will take place after the end of this current age, will be a time of reward and blessing, or a time of discipline and suffering, for us as the believers in Christ. (See “The Salvation of the Soul” • 3.)

Please note, this judgment will not be based on whether or not we believed in Christ, but “according to what we have practiced” (v. 27; cf. 2 Cor. 5:10). That is, it will be based on how we actually lived our Christian life, not on our initial believing in Christ.

Watchman Nee says of this passage,

The gist of this Scripture is to divide into two classes the disciples who have believed in the Lord and possess eternal life. One class denies itself and takes up the cross; the other class does not deny self nor take up the cross. One class is willing to forsake all for the Lord to lose the soul, while the other class seeks to gain the pleasures of the world for self and is unwilling to lose the soul. A disciple of Christ is one whom the Lord has separated out from the sinners. And once again He will separate: this time, separating a self-denying disciple from the non-self-denying one.

— The Salvation of the Soul, Christian Fellowship Publishers, New York, 1978, page 10, in the chapter, “Its Meaning: Self-Denial.”

As we have already said in this series of Notes, we must be clear about the distinction between eternal salvation, on the one hand, and the reward and discipline of the 1,000 year kingdom of Christ, on the other; only then can we properly interpret so many passages along this line in the New Testament. The former relates to the “Once Saved, Always Saved” aspect of salvation, while the later relates to the “Being Saved” aspect of salvation, that is, the salvation of the soul. And it is that “being saved” aspect of salvation, the salvation of the soul, that the Lord is speaking of in this section of the Gospel of Matthew.

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— 18 July 2026 —