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

Good works do not give us a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Rather, good works result from righteousness given by the good work of the Righteous One on the cross.
Epiphany celebrates that we have not been left in our hearts’ cold darkness and this spoiled creation.
Bonhoeffer’s Advent preaching was carried out under the dark shadow of war yet within that night the word of promise sounds forth with radiant clarity. There is much in his preaching to inspire, deepen, and sharpen our proclamation in Advent 2020.
God is coloring over your sin and making you fragrant; he is making you righteous in his sight. The old is gone, forever covered over by this new work.
Unlike human marriage, which is marred by sin, Jesus never seeks to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences.
When we genuinely measure ourselves, we will find ourselves dreadfully lacking.
The parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew hinges on whether a guy is wearing the right costume for the party.
We now stand holy and blameless before our Heavenly Father as his own dear children, and we are set free to serve our neighbor in love.
The only reason we're aware of our old self is in baptism, God created a new self for us.
Character development? Change? Saying that it’s behind you? Yeah right. You’re just saying that because you want your nice polished image back. You haven’t changed. We know. We’ve got the receipts.
A truly Christian work is it that we descend and get mixed up in the mire of the sinner, taking his sin upon ourselves and floundering out of it with him, not acting otherwise than as if his sin were our own.
That is the good news that ifies all hand wringing and wipes away every tear from every eye.