Renewing the Mind

How do human beings get changed?

Renewing the Mind is the second volume of the Getting Changed trilogy, which offers the first sustained study of New Testament clothing metaphors. This book examines five passages where the apostles teach a kind of clothing curriculum to explain how Christians “put off” sin and “put on” their new self—by the renewal of the mind.

Modern Westerners downstream of the Enlightenment often paint a picture of the mind that focuses on the intellect and crops out the imagination. But Paul, in harmony with the other apostles and prophets, shows that the imagination stands at the center of the mind. To renew the mind, then, is to renovate the imagination.

How does this renewal occur?

While much ink has been spilled in recent years regarding the practices most conducive to the Christian’s spiritual formation, the apostles in their clothing curricula point to two foundational disciplines: meditation and contemplation. These often-overlooked exercises open the imagination to the Spirit’s renewing work. Renewing the Mind invites readers to biblically explore the most basic process and practices by which God transforms his people.