External actions depend on our thinking

Righteousness also requires right thinking about God. This point is more clearly seen when we consider man's estate after the fall. His duties, in addition to public worship, now include ministering to the sick and unfortunate, restraining sin and crime, and to this end establishing civil government. But none of these external actions is righteous or pleases God, unless motivated by righteous thinking. It is intellectual activity that makes the external action pleasing to God. - Gordon H. Clark, The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark volume 7