Transforming the Mind: The Ongoing Renewal Process

A man, I say, will never really put off the old and he will never put on the new until he has been renewed in the spirit of his mind. Here he tells us how it is exactly that we can do that and why we should ever do so. So it is one of these profound statements of Doctrine which abounds so much. [00:03:09]

The renewal of the mind is something that goes on. It is being renewed; it's continuous, it's present, it must go on and on and on. That again clearly is a very important point. And the third point about this word is that it's in the passive. It is not something that you and I do. [00:05:42]

The spirit of the mind refers to the interior principle that really governs and controls and operates the mind itself. I mean by that, that in addition to our faculties and our powers and our intellectual abilities, there is a sort of spirit of the mind that controls the whole operation. [00:12:31]

The trouble with man is not in his mind but in the spirit of his mind. They've got the faculties, they've got the abilities, they can be Geniuses at mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, any one of these things. The mind as it were as an organ just as a machine that works and reasons and calculates and thinks and so on, that's all right. [00:20:10]

What we receive in regeneration is not new faculties. What we receive is this new spirit that controls. A new disposition is put into us, a new principle of life is put in, a new spirit enters into the mind and controls it and directs it. So that whereas formerly it went in that direction, it's now going in this direction. [00:28:02]

A man who is a Christian not only thinks different things, but still more important, he thinks in a new way. That's what it is, what happens to the Christian. He's a man who's enabled to think in a new way. He thought before as a non-Christian, he still thinks, ah, but he's thinking in a new way. [00:29:19]

The Apostle gives these instructions not as a drill Sergeant does. The drill sergeant doesn't appeal to intelligence; he balls out instructions, put off, put on. That's not what we have here at all. The Christian life is not a mechanical life. Does this need to be emphasized? [00:34:24]

Christianity is always something that works from within outwards, never from without inwards. That's the whole principle. So you don't just take off one uniform, put on the other. Anybody can do that. A man who's not regenerate can do that. You see, that's the difference between morality and Christianity. [00:36:32]

If this putting off and putting on is not the result of the renewing of the mind, it has no value. We must not only live the new life, but we must want to do so. We must desire to do so. We must feel that it's inevitable. We must feel that we have no choice. [00:38:10]

Christianity is not something that you and I take up intellectually. It is something that takes us up and captivates us and governs us and controls us. This to me is one of the most alarming things of all. I have known people, and God forbid that I should be guilty of judging, but I have known people who, having come to live in Evangelical circles, begin to use Evangelical phrases. [00:40:11]

The test of the Christian is not simply in what he says, not simply in the opinions that he puts forward. It's the spirit of his mind. Look here, says Paul, if the spirit of your mind is changed and is renewed, well then you'll be thinking in such a way that you'll put off the old men, you'll put on the new men. [00:42:41]

We need to be christianized, therefore, in the whole of our being and obviously therefore first and foremost in the mind itself. For as a man thinks, so he is. So you go on being renewed always, constantly, in the spirit of your minds. [00:44:50]