This is almost contradictory to modern teaching.
You would think, to hear men and women testify, that they were their own workmanship, that by the things that they have surrendered and given up or consecrated, they have become the sons and daughters of God.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)
We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ.
He took us—the raw material, sinners without hope and without life—and poured into us His own very nature, made us His own very sons and daughters by nature.
We had before been by nature the children of wrath.
Now we are by nature God’s own sons and daughters. He not only created us in Christ Jesus, but He prepared good works that we should walk in them.
In other words, He made provision whereby every one of us may walk in love, walk by faith.
He made provision whereby the life of Jesus should be reproduced in us, in our daily contact with people.
We are no longer to walk as the heathens walk, in the futility or vanity of their minds, with their hearts blinded or hardened. (See Ephesians 4:17–23.)
But we have not so learned Christ. We have put away, as concerning our former manner of life, the old man.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 6:6)
“The old man which grows corrupt” (Ephesians 4:22) was nailed to the cross in Christ and was buried with Him, was put away.
When Christ arose from the dead, He was free from this old man.
As soon as we take Jesus Christ as our Savior, and come to know what grace really means, we are free too.
You are to walk in the strength and grace of the risen Christ, not by willpower, but by faith in the Word.
“For it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:13).