What does Jesus mean by losing your life?

The light of faith held by a few souls has more than once illumined the path of escape when world disaster threatened.

Heaven is a sort of magic. Faith is like that. The great faith of a few has been able to lift a race—a race otherwise lost. Right and justice only are immortal. Any success not founded on them has no stability.

 

You have but to look at history. Where material interests outweighed moral interests that state was doomed. 

Only through moral integrity, the ideals of individual liberty, a deep consideration for one's fellowmen can be secured the immortality of individual or nation.

You must lose your life—or rather give your life to keep it eternally. That is, you must unselfishly give all you have for the general good, not for glory, but for right. 

To serve your fellows is to build your immortality.