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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Darkness is not your only friend. Jesus loves you, and he will be with you.
God’s gifts, in turn, conform our minds to the mind of Christ, and catechize our imagination in the image of God’s Son.
Both Paul and Martin Luther were Olympic champions when it came to ladder climbing.
God excludes our boasting out of his abundant mercy.
I wanted the devotions of this book to be a source of strength for everyone who has waited all night to see the sun come up again.
Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
Nothing stands against you. Only Christ stands now, and he is for you, more for you than you could ever know, for you like nothing else that has ever loved you.
What the gospel promises is not escape from our humanity, but resurrection from the dead.
Salutary funeral preaching seeks to set the life of the baptized believer who has died within the life of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning.
This book is not in your hands so that we can simply commiserate with each other’s difficulties. It is meant to pierce your sin-darkened night with the light of God’s Word.
I want the beginning of my funeral to be focused on Jesus, as well as the middle, the end, and every point in between.
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.