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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Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.
The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
In Memory of My Friend, James Arne Nestingen
To trust in the Lord, the Messiah, the Deliverer, is our salvation and our only hope. Yet he does not trust us to have this “trust” on our own or of our own will.
We live again, not so that we will now pay our debt, but to proclaim that we live because our debt was paid!
You are a child of God. You’re blameless, holy, perfect, and righteous. Don’t feel that way? Too bad. God is greater than your heart.
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Weak faith in a strong Christ is still saving faith.
We can appreciate what we have received from God, we can receive it all as free gift, but only when we stop investing in fool's gold.
Jesus remakes us, rebuilds us, and resurrects us so the demons that hide in the cracks cannot get ahold of us, the devil cannot break us, and hell will never know us.
Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.