You either look at our past with pride or with humility.

Pride says “I’ve achieved.” Humility says “I’m in need.”

There have always been those who balk at the idea of God’s salvation being offered freely to those who believe. They reason that such a grand gift as forgiveness from such a holy God must require some kind of payment from us. We thank God for His grace, but we understand that He expects us to somehow earn that grace—in other words, there must be something that we can do to pay off the debt we owe to God.

God has always wanted more from His people than just external conformity to a set of rules. He has always wanted them to possess a heart to love, know and follow Him. That’s why God is not concerned with a circumcision of the flesh. Even in the Old Testament, God’s priority was a spiritual circumcision of the heart: “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done”

- from gotquestions.org

Whatever you’ve done in our past, it was not enough.

Your good works were not enough to earn heaven,
and—because of Christ—your great sins were not enough to keep you from there.

What Christ has done in your past is all that matters.

To be found “in him” is the most important faith commitment one can ever make.

The word for “gain” is an accounting term that means “profit.” The word for “loss” also is an accounting term, used to describe a business loss. Paul used the language of business to describe the spiritual transaction that occurred when Christ redeemed him. All his Jewish religious credentials that he thought were in his profit column, were actually worthless and damning. Thus, he put them in his loss column when he saw the glories of Christ. –The MacArthur Study Bible