This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
If you are a Christian, you already have what you need to give a reason for the hope within you. That reason, though, is not you.
Now that the Lord of Sabaoth has involved himself, something ends, something is born.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
God chose Russell Brand, chose to defy his fast-escaping life and drink up all his swift-running sin in the River Thames.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.