Mark 8:36-37 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?… An appeal to the instincts of common sense, which comes specially home to a commercial nation like the English. The selling price — the market value of everything is challenged. All schemes and proposals — whether in the realm of politics or of commerce — are met with this question. The eager desire for profit carries men away till there is no room left for any other purpose in life. For money men will almost dare to die. There are men who for money's worth will sell others' lives — ship owners the lives of their sailors, mothers the happiness of their daughters. But there are more precious treasures at stake sometimes than even flesh and blood. Some will tamper, for money's worth, with what involves the loss of the soul. This is a gain which it is dead loss to win; a price which it is suicidal to pay — selling for money that which no money can buy again; giving — like the foolish Glaucus — golden armour for brazen; trading on capital; embarking, with rotten securities, on a bubble scheme. No amount of earthly gain can free the soul from death and judgment. The moral life once gone — its vitality not destroyed but ruined and turned against itself — how shall it be recovered? Even now there is a foretaste of this awful state. At times there is within the heart a very hell of sin; jealousy, covetousness, cruelty, selfishness, all combining to make such a hell within the breast as a man would shrink from disclosing even to his most lenient friend. Plain sober reason, then, obliges us to consider Christ's question. (H. B. Ottley M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?WEB: For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? |
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