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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Martin Luther knew something about economics. Well, God’s economics anyway.
Americans love the vicarious sense of pride they get from the odds-defying underdog myth.
Your eternal salvation isn’t dependent on performance or effort. Well, not your performance anyway...
In our democratic society we love to talk about freedom. But anybody out there ever tried to be perfect? Ah, shucks. Turns out we’re not as free as we thought.
Luther’s theology lets the believer in Christ dwell under the cerulean sky of God’s unchanging grace.
There’s no watch on the Lord’s wrist. No iPhone in the back pocket of his blue jeans. He did create time; it was his idea. But for him “the right time” is never our time. From our perspective, he’s either way too early or—more usually—way too late.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).
But these good works aren’t done under compulsion. They’re done freely. They aren’t done so that God will love us. They’re done because He loves us.
From Our Series on Luthers, Heidelberg Disputation.
A part of our series on Luther's, Heidelberg Disputation.
He begins with Jesus and ends with Jesus. He is not going to try to complete what Jesus starts.