to renew: to make new again something that already exists, restoring its freshness rather than replacing it
This verb joins the word for "again" to the ordinary Greek word for "new" in the sense of recent. So it describes something being brought back to freshness, not made out of nothing. Whatever gets renewed was already there.
Outside the Bible it is the everyday word for putting a lapsed arrangement back in force:
- renewing an oath sworn between two cities
- renewing a friendship with a foreign power
- renewing an alliance or a truce that had run out
- renewing the goodwill a man's ancestors had shown a city
The New Testament uses it exactly once, in Ephesians 4:23, and there it carries the general sense of being made new rather than the language of treaties. Paul sets it between two decisive pictures: stripping off the old self like a worn out garment, and putting on the new self. The renewing is the ongoing middle step, and Paul locates it in the settled outlook of a person's mind, the disposition that steers how someone thinks and acts. Unlike the stripping off and the putting on, which he describes as done deeds, this making new keeps happening.
Who does the renewing is genuinely open. The Greek wording can mean that believers are being made new by God, which is how most commentators take it, or that they are being told to make themselves new, since the lines on either side are commands. Many settle on a reading that holds both together: let yourselves be made new.
Whether ἀνανεοῦσθαι in Ephesians 4:23 is passive ("be renewed," with God or the Spirit as the unexpressed agent) or middle ("renew yourselves"), the present infinitive being identical in both voices.
- majorityPassive: the renewal is God's continuing work in the believer, and the absence of an agent phrase is normal for a divine passive. Behm's formulation is that the renewal is accomplished on rather than by believers.; A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC 42; H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary, 606-607; P. T. O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, PNTC; B. L. Merkle, Ephesians, EGGNT; J. Behm, "νέος, ἀνανεόω," TDNT 4:896-901
- minorityMiddle, or a permissive middle ("let yourselves be renewed"): the infinitive stands in a chain of infinitives functioning as commands (put off, v. 22; put on, v. 24; speak truth, v. 25), which implies an action enjoined on the readers. Recent reassessment of deponency and of the middle/passive boundary in Koine supports treating the form as a broad middle/passive with permissive force rather than forcing a choice.; J. T. Pennington, "Deponency in Koine Greek," Trinity Journal 24 (2003); D. B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
Disputed
Whether the νεο- root of this verb marks a renewal distinct from that of ἀνακαινόω (καινο- root), so that the choice of verb in Ephesians 4:23 is semantically loaded.
- majorityThe two verbs are near-synonyms in Koine: the νέος/καινός contrast had substantially faded, and the choice in Ephesians 4:23 is stylistic rather than a deliberate signal. Colossians 3:10 uses νέος of the new self while Ephesians 2:15 and 4:24 use καινός, which tells against a fixed distinction.; D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed.; A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians, WBC 42; P. T. O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, PNTC
- minorityThe verb denotes renewal in time, a being made young again, over against the qualitative renewal of ἀνακαινόω, matching the way νέος denotes what has lately come to be and καινός what is new in kind.; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, §60; J. Behm, "νέος, ἀνανεόω," TDNT 4:896-901