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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I am cognizant of the powerful lessons for life I owe to those nights in the air-raid shelter.
The title “peacemakers” is not ours except as we tell and retell his peacemaking story.
We are not saved by the success of our refining process. We are saved precisely because our impurities, no matter what the percentage, ruin the whole thing.
This tiny rural church would bulge at the seams with worshipers from realms seen and unseen, all mixed together in the adoration of the Lamb.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Urchin at War: Volume 1” by Uwe Siemon-Netto (1517 Publishing, 2021).
Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament by Chad Bird is now available to order
When we read about Noah, we are reading backward to Adam and forward to Jesus.
Blessed are we, for we are filled by the cornucopia of Christ’s righteousness.
What Luther is doing in his Catechism is teaching how the gospel is an action of the whole Trinity, not just one of the persons.
The only one rightful heir of the kingdom of God, inherits from us, our cross, and descends into the kingdom of the damned.
The giver of life, the source of joy, stands weeping together with the human family as they grieve under the curse of sin.