Author Archive
Why Do It?
January 27, 2014 | 
Author I have always liked to read and study topically, mostly nonfiction, about theology, apologetics, Christian life, church issues, church history, counseling, science and cultural issues.
When I read, I think and therefore, I am using this venue to record my thoughts.
In his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer quotes Montaigne, “All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.”. That would also apply to what I have written here.
I consider myself a person of simple and pragmatic faith as opposed to any traditional religious superstitions, cliche’s or systematic theology. I like to think that I am like the Bereans when I hear or read something I compare it to how it seems to work in my life and I search the scripture to see if I think it is true. Not just to question authority, but to always verify authority. I hope young people will learn to always look for or ask for the “basis” for what people say and why they say what they say.
I like to share and discuss my understanding of the difference between law and grace. In my opinion most churches are quite legalistic and preach, teach and motivate the “flesh“; rather than teach how to have a proper spiritual connection with Christ. Many churches focus on the believer “being a sinner saved by grace” and seem to focus on a current sin nature, rather than on the joy of “being a child of God” and letting that new nature work out their faith and belief. When I hear preaching, I always consider whether it is “good news”, the gospel, which speaks to my spirit or “bad news”, the law, which speaks to my flesh. As a believer, why would I want to hear the “bad news” sermons, isn’t that walking in the flesh? I know, it takes a certain amount of study and spiritual musing to begin to understand the difference between our spirit and our flesh. This is why knowing the attitude of your “heart“ is so important.
As most will be able to discern, I have not been to a seminary or a bible school. I have a small library of hard-cover books on many biblical topics. My wife and I frequently discuss our faith from a New Covenant perspective. We try to be ready to explain our New Covenant hope to anyone who asks.
I pray for a church and believer paradigm shift away from the Gospel based on fear, guilt, shame and legalism, to one based on the New Covenant life lived with Jesus Christ where believers live their life with a desire in their heart to love life as a “child” of God without condemnation and no legal expectation. That should be the “faith” which brought them to Christ in the first place, not one based on fear of going to Hell. Gal 5:6 22
I believe the Apostle Paul may have been the first Apostle to really understand the Gospel of the New Covenant. (Read that again.) That may be the most important theology for believers to understand when they read, study and hear sermons. The “so-called” church fathers developed the Roman Catholic Church doctrines and rules for the church over many centuries. One man, Martin Luther, after fifteen centuries, taught a new way to look at the gospel which started a whole new orthodoxy outside of the Catholic Church. Although scripture explaining the New Covenant has always been in the Bible. It has not been a primary emphasis of the seminaries. So, it is not without precedent for a new interpretation or way of understanding scripture to have a profound effect on interpretation of Scripture. The “Gospel” of the New Covenant is that it is personal and it is Spiritual life in us. 1John 2:27 Heb 9:15
Another way Luther critiqued church doctrine was based on legalism. In the first century, legalism was a big dialogue between the Judaizers who wanted to keep much of the Jewish law and Paul who was explaining the New Covenant in his writings about “freedom from the Law”, life and grace. (There are several passages about this in scripture.) Luther also wanted to keep the book of James out of the Bible because of his reference to works. Now we come to the second most important understanding of scripture for believers, preachers and teachers, That is, The New Testament and the New Covenant are not the same thing. The four Gospels in the New Testament are about Christ’s ministry to the Jews. Where He is explaining to the Jews that the Law did not change the heart, but He was also teaching, by way of forthtelling, His Apostles about the coming “spiritual life based on love” in the New Covenant. (See New Covenant Life)
I study Scripture to maintain a personal statement of faith and practice which is defined by God’s written Word, by my life in Christ and by the promise of the Holy Spirit. This site is that statement.
Acts 17:10-11 10 ¶ And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
1 John 4:1 [ On Denying the Incarnation ] Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 Peter 3:13-18 ESV But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. [14] Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. [15] And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, [16] as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. [17] You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. [18] But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
Galatians 5:1 ESV For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Philippians 2:12-13 ESV
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, [13] for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Copyright © 1996 Theophilos www.gflstudy.org
Revised 2019
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Why Me?
This is not about an old-time-religion; it is not about a New Age spiritual experience based on someone’s imagination, nor is it about cultic kool-aid. As you can see, I have been around awhile and I want to share with you some of the things which I have learned from my personal Biblical studies which has opened my eyes to the truth about what the New Covenant Christian life is. If you are a Calvinist, or you like one of the denominational “isms”, or you think the New Testament and the New Covenant mean the same thing, then you probably wont read much of this. If you just read the Preface, you will get a little glimpse of what I think is important to understand concerning Scriptures about the New Covenant perspective.
I am Dan Boliek. I live in Tempe, Arizona with my wife Peggy. We have four children and nine grandchildren who are all as interested in this view of the Christian life as we are.
You will know, if you read many of my essays, that I have not been to a seminary or bible college. My vocation has been in Accounting and Data Processing Administration which has led me to have developed some skills in and knowledge of computer systems and software integration.
My wife and I have been active in Baptist/Evangelical churches all of our married life. We met on the steps of a church. >>>
Several years ago, my wife and I had what many people would describe as an awakening or enlightenment by the Holy Spirit. This was no immediate external physical or spiritual event. It was simply a realization over time, and after much searching in scripture and contemplation, that the churches we have been in do not do a good job of teaching how to live our Christian life as a personal spiritual relationship. In other words, we realized that what we had heard taught and preached, generally did not line up with a New Covenant view of Christian life.
I think many people come to this understanding sometime during their life and simply quit church life. It is a mystery to me, why so many churches still mix law (performance expectations) and grace in their mostly motivational preaching and teaching; and why every scripture teaching is not explained relative to the New Covenant paradigm which Jesus Christ established. In my opinion, this old-time church-religion teaching should always be exposed for what it is. It seems like most Christians have a personal relationship with their church rather than with Jesus Christ.
In some way, for us, when we came to this New Covenant understanding, there was a significant release whereby we felt free to simply live our life as a child of God. Our identity in Christ was more important than performance in a church environment. Our personal relationship with this concept now guides all of our thoughts and actions, and our understanding of scriptures. It has motivated us to have better personal relationships with those around us, rather than having the institutional church and its activities be the focus of our Christian life and the motivation for what we do.
Copyright © 2010 Daniel R. Boliek www.gflstudy.org
This is an exceptional book for New Covenant Believers.
The Naked Gospel, by Andrew Farley
This is a very good book about how to study and understand the personal transformation intended by the New Covenant. The typical modern evangelical church model is “come, grow, serve and go”. My problem with this paradigm is that the primary message is usually to motivate members to “serve and go”. This makes church growth the main thing, rather than an understanding of personal transformation for members.The leadership of most churches seem to be happy just getting new Christians to join “Team Christian”. Teaching a new believer their true identity in Christ and how that is supposed to work in their life situations according to the New Covenant seems to be of secondary importance. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the scriptural basis for the New Covenant and how it causes a personal transformation which should lead to a victorious Christian life. This is the Gospel the way it should be taught. Dan Boliek, aka Theophilos
Love
1 John 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Life
Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life. http://bible.us/Prov4.23.NKJV
Tags: New
And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. http://bible.us/2Cor3.4.NKJV
Is Christianity Really Real?
Is Christianity really real? If so, where is it? Anyone can claim to be a Christian, and many do, who don’t have a clue about what it really is, because, deceived by their own imagination and conscience they want to define it in their own terms and superstitious beliefs. Any “new-age” ideas will work for many people, but, just to be safe, they want to be known as Christians. That can not be it. Or, in many cases, leaders are just charlatans exploiting a religious Christianity based on a perverted interpration of scripture. Then there are those who have been taught to interpret and teach scripture in a way which ignores the reality and meaning of the New Covenant. The Bible tells us how to know the real thing and the real Christians.(John 13:35)
I can understand why many young people have doubts, when preaching seems to be simply a way of controlling your life by guilt, fear and expectations, rather than teaching the “newness” of life which Christ taught for the New Covenant way. It is important to know that the “New Covenant” and the “New Testament” are not the same thing. See/join this discussion “New Covenant Interpretation” (Romans 7:6; 6:4; Hebrews 10:14-20)
In many seminaries, professors are teaching students how to make Christianity a religion. When these students get into their denominational work, they then teach and preach that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship, but then they usually mix in their religious church rules and performance expectations. A religion would be something similiar to what the Pharisees promoted; a set of church rules to live by in order to be a good Christian, obedience and commitment. On the other hand, a true relationship is based on “walking in newness of life” which is the New Covenant way.
It is easy to recognize the difference. Does your church frequently teach on obedience, commitment, sin, motivation and fear, rather than love, grace and the freedom of being a child of God and living a Christian life? Or, worse than that, do they teach one way one time and another way another time? (John 13:34; Mark 12:30-31)
But don’t give up on the Bible, it is actually spot-on for all of life’s circumstances and relationships and for what happens in this world. But, you must be born-again in order to interpret its meaning correctly in a nonlegalistic and selfless way. Somehow, if you are really “born-again”, over time, the Holy Spirit will help you understand what the scripture really means and it will change the frustrations of your heart. (See this article for what being “born-again” is all about.)
Don’t let ill-informed preaching influence your personal views. Study scripture yourself from a “New Covenant” perspective and see if it is really real. If it begins to make sense, that may be the Holy Spirit calling you to repent of unbelief. Being a born-again believer is simply repenting of your unbelief not making a commitment to resolve all sin in your life.
Walking by faith, then, is simply believing God for what He has done and what He says He will do in Scripture, in all of life’s situations, opportunities and circumstances. Walking by faith, is not trying to avoid sin and sinful thoughts. You learn to walk (think and act) where God is, not where your mind wants you to go.
What Does “In God” Mean To Me?
There are also terms such as “in me”, “in Christ”, “in the Father”.
Sometimes it is just an object of belief, other times it is a spiritual identity kind of like DNA is a physical identity.
This new spiritual identity is called being born-again, so it is not just a commitment to a cause like “Semper Fi”. It is an actual spiritual indwelling of God into “us”. So, spiritually we are also “in God”. Rom 8:11
This is the essence of the “new covenant”, which is called a “new and living way”. We now walk in this “new and living way” rather than by written laws and commandments or our own conscience. John 6:63 2Cor 3:6
Christ taught under the law and explained the “new way” which was coming. The Apostles did not understand that part of what He was teaching until the Pentecost.
Many people still do not understand this “new way”, because they may have been taught according to the “Flesh” rather than according to the “Spirit”. (Motivational teaching always speaks to the flesh. Much of Scripture may also speak to the “Flesh” if it is not studied with an understanding of the New covenant.) So, they live according to a mixture of “law” and “grace”. For some, it is easier to grasp rules and try to live those than it is to understand the freedom of Grace and live because you really know what it means to be “in Christ”.
A few scripture references:
Read the rest of this entry »
Let Scripture Tell You The Plan
True Christianity must be based on correct interpretation of the meaning and message of Scripture as enlightened by the Holy Spirit in the heart of a true believer. Thus, any systematic christianity taught by seminaries and churches is by definition a pseudo christianity or simply a christian philosophy of life. Anyone espousing a legalistic form of christianity is most likely presenting his or her own ideas based on their conscience. Conscience is not how God speaks to us. Quite the contrary, conscience is that part of a fallen nature which allows humans to think that they can be; like God, apart from God.
Much of the Bible is about a particular legalistic system, knowledge and use of this part of the Bible, to promote fear, without understanding and explaining God’s purpose and Grace in the New Covenant is a gross misunderstanding of the Bible. Have you ever noticed, that people with a strong conscience, usually want to tell other people how they should live.
Here is the plan. Read the rest of this entry »
No Condemnation
This is one of my all-time favorite books. Dr. Narramore is a Professor at Biola. There are several extremely helpful chapters and concepts in this book.He makes a strong case that human “conscience” was derived from “the Fall” and contrary to how many Christians think. It is not the way God talks to us. In fact, the conscience is why humans think they don’t need God. They can be self-sufficient. Or, that the conscience was given to humanity by God, so they can know what is right and wrong.
Another significant theme is that “guilt feelings” should never be used to motivate anyone.
The Two Covenants
This is an example of a book about the two covenants, which misunderstands what the New Covenant is. This is an old-time-religion book. I think he writes according to what his professors taught him and not according to a personal understanding of scripture.
He says the primary purpose of the New Covenant “is to meet the need for a power of not sinning.”(Pg.56). Wow, it sounds like some type of power is transfered to us in order for us to defeat sin in our life. How is that working for you?
Later he says “The great blessing of the New Covenant is obedience; the wonderful power to will and do what God wills.”(Pg. 123) Obedience is a term related to a law or a rule, but New covenant Christians are not under the law.
The New Covenant has two commandments both based on love. It is not possible to be obedient to these commandments. Love simply becomes a duty if it is done for obedience.
So. this is a good study in what the New Covenant is not.
I read a book like this critically and probably get as much or more out of it than one with which I agree.
Hebrews 8:10-12; 10:5-10; 10:17-18
Ephesians 1:7-8
Colossians 1:21-22
2Corinthians 3:5-6 3:7-11; 5:18-21
The Rebirth of Orthodoxy
Thomas C. Oden, a leading theologian describes the unexpected resurgence of a New Christian Orthodox — post denominational, flexible, and rooted in ancient beliefs.
Here is an interesting excerpt from pages 84-85 of the book.
Comparative Trajectories of Two Methodist Radicals
Not until I recently explained to younger friends how closely my path had followed the same trajectory as that of Hillary Rodham Clinton did they grasp what I was saying about my history. It seems odd now, but Hillary was working out of precisely the same sources and moving in the same circles as I in our formative years. In fact, our two trajectories almost mirrored one another until the early seventies. I fell much harder for Marxist ideology than she ever did, but we made many of the same ideological stops along the way.
Why do I mention this? Because Hillary’s pattern clarifies where I once squarely located myself ideologically, only later to reverse myself and disavow previous opinions. My education paralleled hers (Yale, Methodist activism, moving ever leftward), both in the ideas we held and the people by whom we were mentored. We were both avid followers of Saul Alinsky, a pragmatic urban organizer and unprincipled amoralist. Hillary became intrigued by situation ethics, the subject on which I wrote my dissertation. She learned her tough amoral activism from Alinsky and her view of history from quasi-Marxists, just as I did. She once revealed that she had saved every copy of motive magazine, the progenitor of much of her religious and political radicalism, and so have I. That magazine fueled me intellectually during my heady years as a pacifist, existentialist, Tillichian, and aspiring Marxist, and its editors (Roger Ortmayer and B. J. Styles) were old friends of mine. In those days I trusted completely the Methodist radicalism of motive. It set the leftist momentum of all my thinking, as it did Hillary’s.
Hillary’s chief mentors in Chicago included dear friends of mine, Joseph and Lynn Mathews, and their associates in the Ecumenical Institute of Austin, Texas (later to become the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago), where some of my writings were embedded in their standard curriculum. I went to Yale more than a decade before Hillary did, but we had many threads of mutual friends and almost a total congruence of values in those early days. Her former pastor and mentor, Professor Don Jones, remains my close colleague in ethics at Drew University. During her years in the White House, she belonged to one of the most politically radical local congregations among United Methodists.
When I look now at Hillary’s persistent situational ethics, political messianism, statist social idealism, and pragmatic toughness, I see mirrored the self I was a few decades ago. Methodist social liberalism taught me how to advocate liberalized abortion and early feminism almost a decade before the works of Germaine Greer and Rosemary Radford Ruether further raised my consciousness.Once Completely at Home with Modernity
I left seminary having learned to treat scripture selectively, according to how it well it might serve my political idealism. I adapted the Bible to my ideology an ideology of social and political change largely shaped by soft Marxist premises about history and a romanticized vision of the emerging power and virtue of the underclass. Though during this time it was largely knowledge elites (professors, writers, movement leaders) rather than the underclass that shaped my views, I nursed an inordinate confidence in my own ability to define the interests of the poor.
Like all broad-minded clergy I knew, I tried hard to reason out of modern naturalistic premises, employing biblical narratives narrowly and selectively. I could plead for social change and teach hearers to take pride in their good intentions and works; but I was not prepared to communicate the saving grace of God on the cross, which I experienced oniy at some vague and diffuse level and would never have thought of personally attesting publicly.
The Astonished Heart
Robert Farrar Capon is an Episcopal priest. On page 101 he tells how a true body of believers might start a new group when a marginal church dies.
WHERE HAS THE CHURCH BEEN, AND WHAT HAS IT BECOME?
According to Robert Farrar Capon, the answers to these questions are
in many ways dispiriting. Although the church has done much good,
it has also made numerous blunders in its checkered history. Chief
among them is that it has lost its astonishment over the Good News
of the gospel – the gift of salvation we receive from Christ.
By taking readers on an illuminating ramble through the history of the
church, Capon shows how we have lost this sense of astonishment
by making Christianity into a religion that focuses on requirements and
restrictions rather than on the Good News, and by turning the church,
which should be a body of believers, into an institution that empha-
sizes its corporate functions to the detriment of its gospel message.
After exploring all the ways in which the church has mis-embodied
itself over the centuries, Capon .explains how the church today might
re-create itself. The key, according to Capon, is recovering the gift
of astonishment with which it began.
Capon is fully alert to both the tragedy and the comedy of church
history, and he covers this uneven ground with great heart and great
humor – and genuine hope for the future of the church.
ROBERT FARRAR CAPON is an Episcopal priest and the author of
many widely popular books, including The Romance of the Word;
The Mystery of Christ; Health, Money, and Love; and a trilogy on Jesus’
parables – The Parables of the Kingdom, The Parables of Grace,
and The Parables ofJudgment.
ISBN O-8028-D7’91-7
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