Sound grace teaching does a great deal of clearing away. It pulls the believer off the law's treadmill, takes the whip of performance out of his hands, and shows him that he stands complete in Christ, forgiven, sealed, and accepted in the Beloved — not because of anything he has done, but because of everything Christ did. That work is necessary and good. Half the bondage in Christendom comes from men trying to be sanctified by the very thing that could never justify them.

But there is a question that meets the believer the moment he steps off that treadmill, and it is a fair one: now what do I actually do? He has been told what not to do — do not keep the law for righteousness, do not measure yourself by ordinances, do not return to the weak and beggarly elements. He believes it. And then he stands in the middle of the room and wonders how a saved man is supposed to grow, if not by the old machinery of rules and effort.

Two bad answers are usually waiting for him. The first is a quiet return to law — a fresh list of do's and don'ts, baptized in grace language but functioning exactly like the yoke he just escaped. The second is the opposite error: "let go and let God." Stop striving, stop trying, become passive, and God will live the life through you while you do nothing. One answer hands him back the whip; the other hands him a recliner. I came by that second picture honestly. Growing up, my mother would often ask my father when he was going to get to some job around the house, and from the comfort of his recliner he would most often answer, "When the spirit moves me." He was not a saved man — but he could not have stated the "let go and let God" position any more plainly. Neither answer is what Paul taught.

Paul taught a third thing, and it is neither law-keeping nor passivity. It is a real, constructive, God-given mechanism by which the new creature grows. The Spirit gave it to us mostly in Romans 6 and Romans 12, and it can be stated plainly: know what is true, reckon it true, yield to it, and let your mind be renewed. This is the grace walk. It is not a treadmill, and it is not a recliner. It is a walk — and a walk is something you actually do, one step at a time, on the strength of where you already stand. If you cannot stand, you cannot walk; and if your standing is weak, your walk will be wobbly rather than stedfast.

Two Senses of Sanctification, and a Counterfeit to Refuse

Before the steps, a word about the title. Sanctification wears two senses in Paul, and confusing them is half the trouble. There is a positional sanctification — the believer was set apart and made holy the moment he believed. Paul tells the Corinthians, of all people, "ye are sanctified" (1 Corinthians 6:11) — already, past tense, an accomplished fact. This sanctification is complete; it never grows and it never slips, because it rests on Christ's work and not on yours. And there is a practical sanctification — the daily walk, the living-out of that holiness, which truly does grow or stall. This article is about the second. But it stands on the first, and the two must never be allowed to trade places.

Here many who rightly separate standing from state take a wrong turn. Having granted that the standing is secure, they teach that the state runs on a fellowship that breaks every time you sin and must be bought back by confessing it — so that a believer, though eternally safe, can be out of fellowship and not right with God until he confesses his way back, his communion flickering on and off all his life until death finally settles it. That is not Paul's gospel for the Body of Christ; it is the old treadmill wearing a new coat. The instruction to confess your sins in order to be forgiven was written to Israel's believing remnant, not to us — and Paul, our apostle, never once hands it to the Body. He says the opposite. God, "having forgiven you all trespasses" (Colossians 2:13), is not re-forgiving you sin by sin; the Lord "will not impute sin" (Romans 4:8); and you remain sealed in the very moment you grieve Him — "grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed" (Ephesians 4:30). You can grieve the Spirit and be sealed by Him in the same breath: the one touches your walk, the other holds your standing, and the standing never moves.

And "not right with God" mistakes where your rightness comes from in the first place. It was never your performance to keep; it is Christ's righteousness imputed — "that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God" (Romans 5:1), accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6), complete in Him. A believer whose walk is wrong is still as right with God as Christ is righteous, because the righteousness is Christ's and not his own. So sin is real and it costs — but mark exactly what it does and does not do. It does not unforgive you, unseal you, break your peace with God, or lower your standing by an inch. What it does is grieve the Spirit, dim your communion, drain your fruitfulness and reward (1 Corinthians 3:15), and pull your walk out of line with who you already are. And the remedy is not a transaction at a confessional but the very thing this article lays out: a mind brought back to the truth of your position, and a walk that flows from it again.

Step One — Know: Sanctification Is Built on a Finished Fact

Before there is anything to do, there is something to know. Paul does not begin the practical section of Romans by telling the believer to try harder. He begins by telling him what is already, irreversibly true of him in Christ.

"God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Romans 6:2 KJV)

Notice the tense. Not should be dead to sin, not will become dead to sin if we work at it — we are dead to sin. This happened at the cross, by identification. When Christ died, we died; when He was buried, we were buried; when He rose, we rose to walk in newness of life.

"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:3–4 KJV)

This is the one baptism that operates today — the Spirit's work joining the believer to Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, without water. And it produced a fact that no effort of ours created and no failure of ours can undo:

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." (Romans 6:6 KJV)

Here is the whole foundation of the grace walk. Sanctification under grace does not start with what we must achieve; it starts with what God has already accomplished. The old man — the man we were in Adam — was crucified with Christ. The believer is not trying to put the old man to death; God has already executed him. (This needs holding precisely, because Paul does command a daily putting-to-death — but never of the old man. What he tells us to mortify day by day is the deeds of the body and our members which are upon the earth — "mortify the deeds of the body", "mortify therefore your members" (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). The old man is crucified once, for good; the deeds of the flesh are mortified daily — and the daily mortifying rests on the once-for-all crucifixion as its ground.) Everything Paul commands afterward rests on this finished fact. Law says, "Do, in order to become." Grace says, "You have become; now walk in what you are."

This is exactly why the grace walk can never be a treadmill. A treadmill assumes you are running toward acceptance you do not yet have. The believer already has it. He does not labor for life; he labors from it.

Step Two — Reckon: Faith Counting God's Fact as True

Knowing the fact is the foundation. But knowing alone does not yet change how a man lives on Tuesday afternoon when temptation comes. The first thing Paul tells the believer to do is to reckon.

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:11 KJV)

To reckon is to count something as true and to act on it — the way a man counts the balance in his account and writes the check accordingly. Reckoning does not make you dead to sin; verses 2 through 10 already established that you are. Reckoning is faith taking God at His word and treating the fact as a fact in the moment of decision.

This is the hinge that distinguishes the grace walk from both errors at once. It is not law, because you are not reckoning in order to earn a standing — you are reckoning a standing you already possess. And it is not passivity, because reckoning is something you do. Paul says "reckon ye." The command lands on the believer's will. When the flesh whispers that you are still its servant, you answer with the fact: I am dead to that. I have nothing to do with it. The man who used to answer this temptation was crucified with Christ. That is not pretending; it is believing what God has already declared, and refusing to live below your own position.

A believer who has not learned to reckon will feel every pull of sin as though it still has rightful claim on him. A believer who reckons meets the same pull with settled truth: the claim was cancelled at Calvary.

Step Three — Yield: Presenting Your Members to God

Reckoning is internal; it is faith counting the fact. But Paul immediately moves the truth out to the body, to the hands and feet and tongue, with a second command: yield.

"Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." (Romans 6:13 KJV)

This is the most practical instruction in the chapter, and it is unmistakably active. To yield is to present, to hand over, to place at someone's disposal. Your members — your eyes, your mouth, your hands, your time, your strength — are instruments, and instruments are used by whoever holds them. The believer makes a real, daily, repeated choice about whose hand his members are in.

There is help in the very word. We know it best from the road — a yield sign at the place where two paths cross. But notice what that sign is and is not. It is not a command to coast or to go limp; the driver who simply stops paying attention at a yield does not obey it, he causes a wreck. The sign asks one decisive question: who has the right of way? That is precisely Paul's question. Your members come to that intersection many times a day, and at each one something is given the right of way — the old appetite, or God. To yield is not to drift and let things happen; it is to decide, deliberately, whom you will let pass through your eyes, your tongue, your hands. Yield to sin and sin drives; yield to God and you present those same members as instruments of righteousness. The sign never makes the choice for you — it puts the choice in front of you.

Paul presses the point with the picture of servanthood:

"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Romans 6:16 KJV)

Mark what this does to the "let go and let God" myth. If sanctification were a matter of the believer going limp while God runs his body for him, why would Paul command him to yield his members at all? You cannot yield passively. Yielding is a decision of the will, made again each time the choice arises. Grace does not remove the believer's responsibility to choose; it gives him, for the first time, the freedom and the power to choose righteousness — because sin's dominion is broken:

"For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." (Romans 6:14 KJV)

Sin's dominion is gone; sin's solicitation is not. The flesh still asks for the instruments. The grace walk is the steady practice of reckoning yourself dead to sin's claim and then handing your members to God instead — not to gain life, but because you are already alive from the dead.

Step Four — Renew: The Mind, the Engine of Ongoing Change

Reckoning and yielding describe the moment-by-moment decision. But Paul also tells us how the believer is changed over time — how the new creature actually matures rather than merely surviving each temptation. The mechanism is the renewing of the mind.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (Romans 12:1–2 KJV)

Two things deserve attention. First, the motive: "by the mercies of God." The whole appeal rests on mercy already received, not on punishment threatened. That is the difference between grace and law in a single phrase. Law motivates by fear of penalty; grace motivates by the weight of mercy. The believer presents his body because of what God has freely done, not in order to make God do it.

Second, the method: "be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." Transformation is real, and Paul tells us the channel through which it comes — a renewed mind. The believer is not changed by suppressing the flesh with rules, nor by emptying his mind and waiting for a feeling. He is changed as his thinking is steadily replaced — the world's thinking put out, God's thinking, His word rightly divided, put in. As the mind is renewed, the man is transformed; conduct follows conviction. This is the engine. Reckon and yield are the daily steps; the renewed mind is what makes the whole walk move forward instead of in circles.

This is also why sound doctrine is not a luxury for the grace believer but the very food of his growth. And here a common mistake has to be named plainly. Most people treat the gospel as the method of salvation and nothing more — the door you walk through once and then close behind you. Having entered, they go looking somewhere else for how to actually live: back to the law, to religious experience, to self-improvement. But Paul never treats his gospel as merely the entrance. He treats it as the engine of the entire Christian life. The same revelation that saved you is the revelation God uses to grow you.

Listen to how Paul closes the very epistle that lays out the grace walk:

"Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began," (Romans 16:25 KJV)

You are not only saved according to Paul's gospel — you are stablished according to it. Establishment — settledness, maturity, a walk that does not wobble — comes by the same gospel that justified you, not by something bolted on afterward. Paul says the same to the Colossians: the word of the truth of the gospel "bringeth forth fruit... in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth" (Colossians 1:6). The gospel that saved them is the gospel that bears fruit in them.

This is why the renewed mind feeds on grace doctrine and nothing else will do. A mind starved of Paul's gospel cannot be renewed by it. The believer grows in exact proportion to how much of God's truth — who God has made him in Christ: complete, accepted, risen, seated — has replaced the world's noise in his thinking. File the gospel away as a past transaction and you leave the mind nothing to be renewed by. Keep feeding on it and you are transformed.

The Walk Follows the Mind

That the mind governs the walk is not a single proof-text; it is the settled pattern of Paul's epistles. He traces the walk back to the mind that drives it with remarkable consistency.

He explains the old life entirely by a mind:

"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:" (Ephesians 4:17–18 KJV)

The dark walk comes out of a darkened understanding. Conduct is downstream of cognition. And that is exactly why, when Paul turns to the cure in the same passage, the renewing lands precisely where the problem was — "be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (Ephesians 4:23). The walk was darkened at the mind; it is mended at the mind.

He states it next as a flat principle:

"For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans 8:5–6 KJV)

Read the two halves together. The walk — after the flesh, or after the Spirit — is welded to the minding. What a man minds is what he walks after, without exception; and the outcome tracks the mind, death the one way, life and peace the other.

He even couples the two words in a single breath:

"Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." (Philippians 3:16 KJV)

To mind the same thing is to walk by the same rule; they are one act seen from two sides. And the dark mirror stands three verses later — the enemies of the cross are those "who mind earthly things" (Philippians 3:19). Their minding and their walking are a single fact.

This is the architecture of Ephesians itself. Three chapters fill the mind with position — chosen, accepted, raised, seated, complete — and only then come the chapters of the walk: walk worthy of the calling (4:1), walk not as the Gentiles (4:17), walk in love (5:2), walk as children of light (5:8), walk circumspectly as wise (5:15). Position fills the mind; the renewed mind produces the walk. So the believer who wants a changed walk does not begin with his feet. He begins with his mind, and feeds it the one thing that can renew it — the truth of who God has made him in Christ. The walk can never rise above the mind that governs it.

The Same Walk, Said Other Ways

What Romans states as reckon, yield, renew — and what we have just watched Paul trace from the mind out to the walk — he restates across his epistles in complementary figures, every one of them active, every one resting on a finished position.

He calls it putting off and putting on, like changing clothes:

"That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." (Ephesians 4:22–24 KJV)

Two things stand out in the picture. First, it is an exchange, not merely a removal. You do not just strip off the old habits and stand there empty-handed; you put on the new. The believer who only tries to stop sinning, with nothing put on in its place, has left the wardrobe half bare — and Paul's own examples in the verses that follow name the trade exactly: put off lying, put on speaking truth; let him that stole steal no more, but rather labour and give. Sin is not merely quit; it is replaced. Second, mark what sits in the middle of the command — "be renewed in the spirit of your mind." The renewing of the mind is not a separate department of the Christian life; it is the very hinge between the putting off and the putting on. Change the thinking, and the wardrobe changes with it.

He calls it walking in the Spirit — and the fruit it bears is the Spirit's, not the flesh's manufacture:

"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16 KJV)

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (Galatians 5:22–23 KJV)

Two words in this figure repay attention. The first is walk — not leap, not soar, not a single crisis that settles everything at once, but the plainest, most repeatable motion there is: one step, then another, in the same direction. Sanctification is not a second blessing seized in a moment; it is a daily walk. The second is fruit. Notice Paul does not call love, joy, and peace the works of the Spirit — the flesh has works (verse 19), things manufactured by effort — he calls them the fruit of the Spirit, things grown. And read it exactly as Paul wrote it: the fruit of the Spirit is — singular, not the fruits of the Spirit. The works of the flesh "are" (verse 19), many and scattered; the fruit of the Spirit "is," one ripened character with many facets. It is not a menu from which a man picks the love and leaves the temperance; the whole cluster grows together, or it does not grow. You cannot manufacture joy by gritting your teeth any more than you can bolt apples onto a tree; you walk in the Spirit, and the fruit grows of itself. And the promise is not that you will fight the flesh to a standstill, but that walking in the Spirit crowds it out — "ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." Fill the step with the Spirit and there is no room left to fulfil the flesh.

He calls it being rooted and built up, growing from a settled foundation:

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving." (Colossians 2:6–7 KJV)

The little word so carries the whole doctrine. As you received Christ, so walk in him — the manner of the entrance sets the manner of the walk. So ask how you received him. Not by law-keeping, not by ceremony, not by going passive and waiting for a feeling, but by faith, resting on his finished work, taking God at his word. Then walk the same way you came in. The believer who received Christ by grace through faith and then tries to walk by law has switched engines midstream; so has the one who received him by faith and then tries to walk by drifting. Paul says keep the engine you started with. The faith that laid hold of Christ for salvation is the same faith that lays hold of him for the walk — and a walk built that way is rooted, built up, and stablished, not blown about.

He calls it seeking the things above and mortifying the deeds of the body — and grounds the command, again, on a fact already true:

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." (Colossians 3:1 KJV)

"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth..." (Colossians 3:5 KJV)

Here the figure adds something the others assume: direction. Seek the things above; set your affection there — because that is where you actually are, risen with Christ and seated in him. The renewed mind is not merely full of true thoughts; it is aimed. Where a man sets his affection is where his feet eventually follow. Fix the gaze on your true location, and the earthly members begin to lose their pull — which is the inward side of the very mortifying Paul commands in the next breath.

And mortifying is not a separate technique bolted onto the walk; it is the put-off side of the very same mechanism. You mortify a deed of the flesh by reckoning yourself dead to it, refusing to yield your members to it, and presenting them to God instead — and Paul names the power by which it is done: "if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13). Through the Spirit, by a renewed mind — not by gritted teeth and willpower.

Every figure tells the same story. There is a fact already true — risen with Christ, the old man crucified, complete in Him — and there is a corresponding action the believer takes in light of it: put on, walk, seek, mortify, yield, reckon. Position first, then practice; indicative first, then imperative. That order never reverses in Paul. The walk always flows downhill from a standing already given.

The Warfare Is Aimed at the Mind

We have seen that the walk follows the mind. The enemy of the believer's walk has seen it too — and it tells him precisely where to aim. Note first where he does not aim: he does not waste his fire on the believer's standing, because he cannot reach it. The believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise until the redemption (Ephesians 1:13–14), complete in the One who is Himself "the head of all principality and power" (Colossians 2:10). Satan cannot unseal what God has sealed or unfinish what Christ has finished. The position is untouchable. So he goes after the one ground left to him — the mind — to spoil the walk that flows from it.

Paul names the battlefield plainly. Our warfare is real, but it is not waged where the flesh would wage it:

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;" (2 Corinthians 10:3–5 KJV)

Look at the targets — imaginations, high things, thoughts, knowledge. Every one of them is in the mind. This is a war of ideas against the knowledge of God, and the objective is to bring every thought captive to Christ. Paul feared exactly this kind of breach for his converts:

"But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." (2 Corinthians 11:3 KJV)

The serpent's ancient method has not changed. He did not overpower Eve; he reasoned with her, adjusted her thinking, corrupted the mind until the walk followed. With the lost he simply keeps the mind dark — "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not" (2 Corinthians 4:4). With the believer, whose mind has been given light, he cannot blind it again, so he works to corrupt it and crowd it: through philosophy and vain deceit (Colossians 2:8), enticing words (Colossians 2:4), every wind of doctrine and the sleight of men (Ephesians 4:14), seducing spirits and doctrines of devils (1 Timothy 4:1). The campaign is doctrinal from beginning to end. It is fought over what you believe.

This also tells us what the warfare is not. It is not the carnal spectacle of binding, rebuking, and incantation — "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal" — and neither are they theatrical. The Pauline armour is mostly defensive, and its pieces are truth, faith, and the word:

"Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil... Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth... Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:" (Ephesians 6:11–17 KJV)

Mark where the protection sits. The helmet guards the head — the mind — and it is the helmet of salvation, the settled knowledge of what God has already made you. The shield is faith, quenching the fiery darts — the flung thought, the accusation, the doubt — before they can lodge. And the single offensive weapon is "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." The same word that is the food of the believer's growth is the blade of his warfare. There is no other weapon, and there needs to be no other.

So the defense is the engine. The believer guards and grows by the very same thing — a mind renewed and kept full of the word, every thought brought captive to Christ. A mind starved of sound doctrine is an undefended mind, and an undefended mind is a wobbling walk. But a mind established in Paul's gospel is "able to stand against the wiles of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11) — and, having done all, to stand.

Neither the Whip Nor the Recliner

Set the grace walk beside the two false answers and the difference is plain.

It is not law, because nothing the believer does here is aimed at gaining a standing he does not have. He reckons because he is already dead to sin; he yields because he is already alive from the dead; he seeks things above because he is already risen with Christ. Remove the finished work and every one of these commands collapses into bondage. Keep it, and they are simply the natural motion of a man living out who he is. Grace does not lower the call to holy living — it raises it, and then supplies the power for it:

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;" (Titus 2:11–12 KJV)

Grace itself does the teaching. The same grace that saves is the grace that schools the believer to deny ungodliness — not law, and not the believer's own willpower, but grace working through a renewed mind.

And it is not passivity, because Paul never once tells the believer to go limp and wait. He tells him to reckon, yield, present, put off, put on, walk, seek, mortify, follow after, press toward the mark. The man who coined "let go and let God" never read Paul's own testimony about how the grace life is lived:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." (1 Corinthians 15:10 KJV)

Read that carefully, because it holds both halves together perfectly. Paul laboured — abundantly, more than them all. That is not passivity. Yet not I, but the grace of God. That is not self-effort either. The grace believer is fully active and fully dependent at the same time. He works, and it is God's grace working in him. Paul says it again to the Philippians:

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12–13 KJV)

You work out; God works in. The two are not rivals. "Let go and let God" cuts the believer's effort out of the verse; legalism cuts God's working out of it. The grace walk keeps both, exactly as Paul wrote them.

The New Creature Grows the Way It Was Born

A man is saved by grace through faith, apart from works. He is also sanctified the same way — by grace, through faith, on the strength of a finished work, not by the labor of the flesh. The new creature grows the way it was born.

So the answer to "what do I actually do?" is not a new list of rules, and it is not nothing. It is this: Know what God has made you in Christ. Reckon it true when sin presses its old claim. Yield your members to God as the instruments of a man who is alive from the dead. And give your mind to be renewed by His word, that you may be transformed and prove His good and acceptable and perfect will. None of it earns your standing; all of it flows from it. And the mind kept full of His word does double duty: the very renewing that grows you is what guards you, standing against every wile aimed at your walk.

Paul, near the end, called it pressing forward — not a man on a treadmill running to stay in place, and not a man reclining while God runs for him, but a man walking, reaching, pressing, on the basis of a prize already secured for him in Christ:

"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13–14 KJV)

That is how the new creature actually grows. Off the treadmill, out of the recliner, and into the walk.

© 2026 Edward R. Cross