2. The life, and that you may save for a time, if you cast Me off.
3. And the soul, which will everlastingly perish if you come not to Me, and abide not with Me.
Now consider what is best to be done. Will you take up the cross, come after Me, and so preserve your souls from perishing? or will you shun the cross to save your lives, and so run the danger of eternal damnation? Or, as you have it in John, will you love your life till you lose it? or will you hate your life, and save it? 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal' (John 12:25). As who should say, He that loveth a temporal life, he that so loveth it, as to shun the profession of Christ to save it, shall lose it upon a worse account, than if he had lost it for Christ and the gospel; but he that will set light by it, for the love that he hath to Christ, shall keep it unto life eternal.
Christ having thus discoursed with His followers about their denying of themselves, their taking up their cross and following of Him, doth, in the next place, put the question to them, and so leaveth it upon them for ever, saying, 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' (Mark 8:36). As who should say, I have bid you take heed that you do not lightly, and without due consideration, enter into a profession of Me and of My gospel; for he that without due consideration shall begin to profess Christ, will also without it forsake Him, turn from Him, and cast Him behind his back; and since I have even at the beginning, laid the consideration of the cross before you, it is because you should not be surprised and overtaken by it unawares, and because you should know that to draw back from Me after you have laid your hand to My plough, will make you unfit for the kingdom of heaven (Luke 9:62).
Now, since this is so, there is no less lies at stake than salvation, and salvation is worth all the world, yea, worth ten thousand worlds, if there should be so many. And since this is so also, it will be your wisdom to begin to profess the gospel with expectation of the cross and tribulation, for to that are my gospellers1 in this world appointed (James 1:12; 1 Thess 3:3). And if you begin thus, and hold it, the kingdom and crown shall be yours; for as God counteth it a righteous thing to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, so to you who are troubled and endure it, for 'we count them happy,' says James, 'that endure,' (James 5:11), rest with saints, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, to take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel, etc. (2 Thess 1:7, 8). And if no less lies at stake than salvation, then is a man's soul and his all at the stake; and if it be so, what will it profit a man if, by forsaking of Me, he should get the whole world? 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'
Having thus laid the soul in one balance, and the world in the other, and affirmed that the soul out-bids the whole world, and is incomparably for value and worth beyond it; in the next place, he descends to a second question, which is that I have chosen at this time for my text, saying, 'Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'
In these words, we have first a supposition, and such an one as standeth upon a double bottom. The supposition is this—That the soul is capable of being lost; or thus—'Tis possible for a man to lose his soul. The double bottom that this supposition is grounded upon is, first, a man's ignorance of the worth of his soul, and of the danger that it is in; and the second is, for that men commonly do set a higher price upon present ease and enjoyments than they do upon eternal salvation. The last of these doth naturally follow upon the first; for if men be ignorant of the value and worth of their souls, as by Christ in the verse before is implied, what should hinder but that men should set a higher esteem upon that with which their carnal desires are taken, than upon that about which they are not concerned, and of which they know not the worth.
But again, as this by the text is clearly supposed, so to here is also something implied; namely, that it is impossible to possess some men with the worth of their souls until they are utterly and everlastingly lost. 'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' That is, men when their souls are lost, and shut down under the hatches in the pits and hells in endless perdition and destruction, then they will see the worth of their souls, then they will consider what they have lost, and truly not till then. This is plain, not only to sense, but by the natural scope of the words, 'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' Or what would not those that are now for sin, made to see themselves lost, by the light of hell fire—for some will never be convinced that they are lost till, with rich Dives, they see it in the light of hell flames (Luke 16:22, 23). I say, what would not such, if they had it, give in exchange for their immortal souls, or to recover them again from that place and torment?2
I shall observe two truths in the words.
The first is, That the loss of the soul is the highest, the greatest loss—a loss that can never be repaired or made up. 'What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'—that is, to recover or redeem his lost soul to liberty?