William Burkitt on Mark 8:36

Our Saviour had shewn in the former verses the great danger of seeking to save our temporal life, by exposing to hazard our eternal life. This he confirms in the words before us by a double argument: the first drawn from the excellency of eternal life, or the life of the soul: the second from the irrecoverableness of this loss, or the impossibility of redeeming the loss of the soul by any way or means whatsoever. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Learn, 1. That Almighty God has intrusted every one of us with a soul of inestimable worth and presciousness, capable of being saved or lost, and that to all eternity.

2. That the gain of the whole world is not comparable with the loss of one precious soul; the soul's loss is an inconceivable, irrecompensible, and irrecoverable loss.