John 12:25. He that loveth his soul loseth it; and he that hateth his soul in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. The law of the physical world just spoken of illustrates the law of the moral and spiritual world. ‘Soul' is here the personality, the self, in man: yet not the self in the sense of selfishness, for selfishness must be destroyed not kept.' It is rather that which constitutes the man himself with his likings and dislikings, his loves and hatreds, his affections and desires. It is a law of the moral world then that he who so loves his soul loses it. By simply living for himself and without thought of others, he ‘loses' that very thing which he desires to preserve and make happy. On the other hand, he that in this world ‘hateth his soul,' his soul not brought into subjection to that law of love which is the law of God, and, so hating, denies and crucifies it in order that love may gain the mastery in him, that man shall ‘keep' it, shall keep it too unto the higher life which is not merely future, but which is even now filled with the Divine and deathless (comp. Luke 14:26).

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Old Testament