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23. ἀνανεοῦσθαι δὲ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν, ‘be made young again in the spirit of your mind.’ Notice the present. The process of renewal is continuous. Notice also the characteristically Pauline thought of the newness of life to which the Gospel gives access. In O.T. the thought is found in Isa 40:31; cf. Psa 103:5. Besides the prophecies of the new Covenant (Jer 31:31) and of the new Heaven and the new Earth (Isaiah 65), the closest parallel would seem to be the new Heart (Eze 36:26) and the new Spirit (Eze 11:19). In the Gospel our Lord speaks of the new wine and the fresh wineskins—of the new Covenant in His blood, and of the new Commandment. In St Paul we have ‘the new Creation’ (2Co 5:17; Gal 6:15) and the newness of Life into which we pass at baptism. It is coupled with λουτρὸν παλιγγενεσίας in Tit 3:5. The thought is closely connected with the thought of ‘being born again’ or ‘begotten again’ in Joh 3:3; 1Pe 1:3; 1Pe 1:23 (cf. Hort in loc.). But here and in Col 3:10 the stress is laid on a continuous process which is dependent at every point on the consent of our wills.
τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ὑμῶν. Cf. Eph 4:17 : ‘in the spirit of your mind.’ Dat. local not instr. νοῦς in N.T. is almost confined to St Paul (22 times), Lk (1), Apoc. (2). It is rare in LXX. for לב or לבב (6 times). It is ‘the organ of moral thinking and knowing’ (see Delitzsch, Bib. Psych.). As it is the seat of the deepest corruption (cf. Eph 4:17; Rom 1:28), so the renewal must begin there. Cf. Rom 7:25; Rom 12:2. ‘The spirit of the mind’ is an unique phrase. It must mean the spiritual root or ground out of which the conscious mind springs, ‘intimum mentis,’ Bengel.