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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In Israel today, it's still possible to witness the same scene the disciples saw 2000 years ago when the Bedouin shepherds bring their flocks home from various pastures at the end of the day.
The price was really paid. Your sin remains buried in Christ’s tomb.
When Jesus appeared again to his disciples on that first Easter evening and again a week later with Thomas and the Emmaus disciples, what did Jesus show them? His hands.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
Jonah’s biggest blunder was a failure to understand that God’s grace is always undeserved and always falls on those who are unworthy of it.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
Zwingli the Pastor provides an excellent introduction to the Swiss reformer’s life and work, focusing on Zwingli’s philosophy of church reform, biographical details, and mode of exegesis.
The love of God in Christ Jesus never changes. That love is for you.
The church is called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Where is that message found? In every blade of grass, on every page of Scripture.
We are not pursuing dragons; we are the dragons. We are, all of us, Eustace Scrubb.
A truly Lenten mindset sees the season as preparatory for the resurrection life of Easter as opposed to the mortification of Good Friday.