²⁵ If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

³⁹ If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

³⁵ If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.

²³ except that the Holy Spirit tells me in city after city that jail and suffering lie ahead. ²⁴ But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.

²⁵ Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.

³³ If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.

¹⁶ “Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will do the same. And then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king. If I must die, I must die.”

¹⁴ If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”