Ephesians 4:22
Ephesians 4:2222to put off your former way of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
— "you should put away the old personality that conforms to your former course of conduct" — is read by JWs as an incremental, ongoing put-off, primarily achieved through organisational discipleship: Bible study with Watchtower publications, meeting attendance, field service, and conformity to counsel given by elders. Transformation is a slow accumulation of compliance-shaped character.
Paul's grammar frames transformation as identity-based, not compliance-based. "Put away the old personality" is an aorist infinitive — a decisive past action that the ongoing present life expresses. The old self is already dead with Christ (, ). What commands is not the slow grinding-down of the old self through effort; it is the living-out of a change God has already worked. "The old personality… is being corrupted according to its deceptive desires" — that is diagnosis, naming the trajectory of a self the believer has already left behind. The put-off is real and ongoing in sanctification, but it flows from an identity the believer already has in Christ, not toward an identity they are trying to earn. confirms the starting point: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; look! new things have come into existence." Past tense. Completed. The Watchtower framework collapses sanctification into justification — you grow into acceptance by Jehovah. Paul's framework separates them — you grow from an already-accepted standing.