The renewing of the Holy Spirit is not just to reconstitute our being on the positive side but also to transform us. Second Corinthians 3:18 says, "But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit."
The Holy Spirit transforms us first by dwelling in us. Ezekiel 36:27a says that besides giving us a new heart and putting in us a new spirit God also put His own Spirit into our being. Romans 8:9 and 11 show that the Spirit of God dwells in us to saturate our being with divine, resurrection life.
The Holy Spirit dwells in us in order to transform us by renewing our soul. Romans 12:2a says that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. This means that the indwelling Spirit of God renews our soul, comprising our mind, our emotion, and our will.
Furthermore, according to Colossians 3:10, the Holy Spirit transforms us by renewing the new man unto full knowledge according to the image of God, the One who created him. This means that the indwelling Spirit of God renews us day by day unto the full knowledge of God according to what God is, according to the image of God. The renewing work of the Holy Spirit is making all of us a part of the renewed new man that the new man may resemble God in full. The new man is the Body of Christ, the church. We have to stress emphatically that the renewing of the Holy Spirit eventually consummates in making us absolutely in the image of God in full.
The focus of this message may be expressed in the following statement: the washing of regeneration is to purge away the old things of our natural life, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit is to reconstitute us and transform us with the divine life and the divine nature into the image of God. This makes us the same as God is, not in an individual way but in a corporate way.