As a Man Thinks, So He Is

We have got an adage which reminds us that “As a man thinks, so he is.”  It is absolutely true, although we often tend to forget it.  Everybody today who is alive and doing this or that is proclaiming exactly what he or she thinks!  Everybody is a philosopher, everybody has got a philosophy of life, and we show what our philosophy of life is by the way in which we live.  Our actions always correspond to what we think and what we believe.  Therefore, if people are living a superficial, bubble kind of existence, they do so because that is the sort of mind they have.  It is their failure to think that causes them to live a superficial kind of life.  And this leads me to say that the problem of immorality or vice or crime can never be tackled directly.  Conduct is the result of the point of view, so you can never deal with conduct directly.  To try to do so is the fatal blunder of every non-Christian system.  And we are seeing the failure on all hands.  Men refuse to recognise the fundamental principle that as a man thinks, so he is.  Therefore, it is of no use trying to control his behaviour if his thinking is wrong.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg.383