The Bible says:
“What think ye of Christ?”
— Matthew 22:42
Our thought life is the genesis for our practical life, the ancestor to our actions. The way we think determines the way we’ll act.
We can’t think one way and live another way. When we try we’re divided against ourselves and of all men most miserable. Thoughts have moral value.
“The thought of foolishness (silliness, frivolousness, folly, impious, and perverseness) is sin.”
— Proverbs 24: 9 “The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.”
— Proverbs 24: 9
When no evil act has been committed the evil thought makes one a sinner before God.
(Matthew 5: 28) Someone said, “If you’re ashamed to do it before men you should be ashamed to think it before God.”
Thoughts have moral power and shape our morality and character through the meta-cognition and cognition process. Meta-cognition is thinking about our thinking, it’s objectifying our thoughts and examining them to see what they consist of.
Cognition is the process of thinking our thoughts through, organizing them, and putting them to action because we’ve approved them by our conscience. Therefore, they bear fruit and have rewards.
“I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts.”
— Jeremiah 6: 19
“Then they that feared the Lord ... that thought upon his name ... shall be mine ... spared.”
— Malachi 3: 16-17)
When a person’s metacognition and cognition process works properly, they have a mature nous, or a responsible intellect. Science credits the brain as the source of our thoughts but the Bible gives our heart (our spiritual being) as the source.
(Matthew 15: 18-9; Proverbs 4: 23, 23: 7, et al) The brain is the bridge that spans the gap of spiritual and physical.
The heart (inner man) secretes its thoughts into the brain and the brain articulates the thoughts and turns them into words and deeds through the body’s animation of them. The brain takes spiritual power and transforms it, in compliance to our will, into physical power and sends it to the tips of our fingers and tongue in the form of actions and words.
What the mind envisions or imagines the body acts out in real time.
If our life is to have any correlation with reality our thoughts must have as their point of reference objective truth; the Word of God; we must have a biblical world view.
The Bible says we — our spiritual being — from which our practical life originates ( Proverbs 4: 23) will be judged for how we used our physical bodies. (2 Corinthians 5: 10) The brain is a physical organ and isn’t judged for our thoughts because it’s a servant to the spirit and its thinking process.
We, our spiritual man, will be held accountable for how through the use of our bodies we turned our thoughts into actions. We make our choices, and our choices make us.
The Christian is indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, and if his thought life is right, and he has the “mind of Christ,” he will live the “life of Christ.” Victory through Christ’s lordship will be seen in his practical life if Christ is Lord of his thought life. (II Corinthians 10:5; Philippians. 4: 8) The important and lifecha nging question is still:
What think ye of Christ?”
— Matthew 22:42
James H. Cagle is a Ray City resident who pastored several churches for a total of 11 years. Email him at pastorjameshcagle@ yahoo.com
