If your identity has actually changed, then failure cannot define you anymore. It can only contradict who you are. This is why the primary issue is not behavior. It is identity. Sin has been reduced to something we do, but in Scripture, it is something deeper than that. It is not just action; it is a condition. Not just behavior, but identity distortion. And if we only deal with behavior, we will never actually see transformation, because we are trying to fix the fruit without ever addressing the root.
That is why so much of Christianity feels like behavior management. We are trying to act like something we are not yet convinced we are. And when that is the case, the effort never ends. It becomes exhausting because we are trying to perform our way into an identity that has already been given.
But when righteousness is understood as a gift, not a goal, everything begins to shift. You are no longer working to become right with God. You are living in the reality that you already are. And when that settles in, the pressure to perform begins to break because you are no longer trying to become something. You are learning to live from who you already are.