For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. Mark 8:35
To save one's life is to live according to the dictates of oneself, this way, you preserve who you have always been. In preserving your old self, you are not letting the word of God to come between you and your ambitions, desires, opinions, and all other things that pertain to how you have always been. Those who live this way save their old selves, and according to Jesus, they will lose their lives.
But those who lose their lives are those who forsake the beckoning of their old selves to live in the same way that they had lived before coming to Jesus, but rather do whatever the word of God instructs them to do. To relinquish control of one's life to the authority of the word of God is what it means to lose one's life. Such a person will, for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel, do things that he will hitherto not have contemplated doing or going.
When Jesus said that whoever loses his life for His sake and the gospel's, He was simply saying that to die is to live. Those who live for themselves save their old selves, but die to God; those who live for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel are those who lose their lives, but gain it because they are alive in God.
Toni
