Confusion

 My pastor pointed out that The Bible is not structured anything like a systematic theology textbook.  His explanation for that is that is that God was (is) intending to capture the readers heart.  I think he's probably right about that, but also The Bible covers a wide spectrum of truth.  There's very few succinct summarizations of any theology.  Really, that's because truth is too complex to succinctly cover.  That's why you often have two statements in scripture that seem to contradict themselves.  On one hand you have Jesus verdict about anger in His sermon on the Mount.  Then you have Jesus' hand picked servant instructing people "Get angry but do not sin".  Then you have words in Proverbs that talk about reputation and honor while other verses talk about the need to love instruction.  You shouldn't love instruction to the degree that you forsake honor but you also should not value honor so much that you refuse others' instruction.  Ultimately, goodness and truth *should* reign supreme but we humans tend to have difficulty with those things.

This topic came to mind because I keep hearing Jesus' freeing of the captives described as 'We're saved from the power of sin'.  Then people talk about needing to "kill" sin because it's "so powerful".  If we're free from the power of sin, then the power that sin has is irrelevant.  The thing is, The Bible doesn't say we're free from the power of sin.  THAT is a summation that probably comes from theology textbook.  We are no longer SLAVES to sin.  That is different than saying that we're free from the power of sin.  Also, it'd seem like, to me anyway, that one's lack of slavery to sin can at times take awhile to become evident.  Our position in Christ is absolute and sure.  However, things on this side of heaven can be a good bit murky quite often.