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.

All Articles

The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
The creation is one of God’s good gifts and being cut off from nature and wild places, as we often are in the modern world, is probably not so good for us.
What is your fight club? Who is your Tyler Durden?
Apart from bare, naked faith in Jesus' atoning work for us, no sinner is, or ever can be, holy.
Sacrifice is the beating heart of the Scriptures, but also of our Christian faith.
This had been a lonely year, though. She could keep herself busy for a while with friends and she could distract herself for a few weekends by leaving town, but something was definitely missing.
True faith, saving faith that receives the good news about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a faith created in us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel (Eph 2:8-9).
There’s some wild and untamed prayers in the psalms. But they’re fenced in by order, symmetry, predictability. They organize chaos. And they bring order and hope and stability to our chaotic lives.
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.
Whether one believes Jesus to be God or not, His words and actions proclaim that He did not come to be served but to serve.
Some days, people need a touch. Not just any touch, but something that says, "I care about you, and I love you."
The God who's lifted up above Calvary, abandoned and forsaken, should draw a more discerning crowd of followers.