F. B. Hole

Moreover the exhortation is to "be transformed by the renewing of your mind," for it is always the Divine way to work from the within to the without. Our bodies are controlled by our thinking faculties, and our very thinking faculties need to be renewed; a striking witness this of how deeply and fundamentally the fall has affected us, and of how impossible it is for us even to think aright except as the fruit of God's work. The reference here, however, is not to the new birth, for that has been accomplished in the case of every true child of God, and is consequently never a subject of exhortation, but to that progressive and daily renewing wrought by the Holy Spirit as our minds are enlightened by and brought into subjection to and into harmony with the Word of God.