Scripture is full of seemingly puzzling and paradoxical passages such as Matthew 16:25: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it," which on the surface seems to turn on its head, the typical meaning of life itself. Yet, with any passage from Jesus the Christ, one must try to understand it, recognizing too, that with many passages, there are layers of interpretation or insight into its true understanding. First, it seems natural, to want to save one's own life, as our whole being seems to be caught up in our work, our duties, our family and our friends, so that the desire to sustain our own life, would appear to be quite normal, and anything less than that would appear to be wrong. Yet, when comprehending this passage, recognize too, that no matter how long, how hard, and how much you fight to sustain your life, ultimately, you will lose your physical life itself. So the question now becomes not so much as to whether you can save your life, which you can, for a time, but instead the question becomes what exactly are you saving?
For, in fact, to save your life, any life, that also compromises the very value of life, in order to save it at that time, proves the point, that although you may have heard the Word, the Word never fully took root within you, and thereby you may have saved your life, while also sacrificing your eternal soul. Christ makes it clear that he who loses his life, for His sake, will find the ultimate peace and redemption with Christ. So that, those that do everything within their power, to maintain their temporal existence, as their reason for being, are, in fact, working at odds against Christ.
This means that for way too many people, there is a fundamental mistake that is made twice over; the first mistake being that the greatest gift that you can apply is your own gift of individuality, that is to say, that your apparent mission in life, is to express yourself, in your own way, at all times, because in that way you are just being true to yourself, and thereby "to thine own self be true". This, unfortunately, is a somewhat common mistake in a land that professes so loudly the merits of individual freedom, for being true in this instance, should mean being true to all that is right. Then, there is the second mistake, which is not fully understanding the mission of Christ, to which, when given the opportunity to rule the world, Christ rebuked Satan; and later when Christ was praying in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked His Father for the cup of the cross to be taken away from Him, but at the same time renewed his commitment to acquiesce to His Father's will, which He did.
This then is what is meant by losing your life for His sake; it is an understanding that in His hands, you can never be lost, you can never lose, you can never die but to the physical death, a death that none can escape from, and to recognize that all who come to Christ, all, without exception, have chosen the better way, "and that has made all the difference".