Philippians 3:7

‘Howbeit what things were gains to me, these have I counted loss for Christ.'

The things that he has described were the things that he had treasured and relied on. They had been his life. They had meant everything to him, and he had hoped that eventually they might result in him finding eternal life. He saw them as his great assets, his ‘gains', assiduously built up bit by bit. But then he had faced up to Jesus Christ and had recognised their folly. From then on he had seen all his gains as simply one great loss. In the face of Jesus Christ all else fell away as dross. He had recognised that all that his actions could do before God was leave him bankrupt, and that his only hope of eternal life was through Jesus Christ (Romans 6:23). And so he had turned from all that he had treasured in the past, to Christ. He had counted his past activities to be what they were, fictitious and worthless assets. As a result of responding to Christ he had looked on them as a ‘loss'.

This language of ‘gain' and ‘loss' was typically Rabbinic and so would be recognised by his opponents. It was also typical of the teaching of Jesus Christ. ‘He who will save his life will lose it. He who will lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's (by yielding all to Christ) will gain it' (Mark 8:35; Matthew 16:25; Luke 9:24; John 12:24). ‘For what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his life?' (Mark 8:36; Matthew 16:26; Luke 9:25). Paul had taken Jesus at His word. He had forfeited his whole religious world for Christ's sake, and had thereby found eternal life.

The verb for ‘counted' is in the perfect tense indicating something done in the past the effect of which continued to the present time. He had renounced his past once and for all.