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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The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.
As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
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.
Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
God is not calling us to “grow up.” He is calling us to dependence.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
It all starts with God; and it all ends with God. He is the alpha and omega of giving and generosity.
A theologian is a passive receiver of God’s active revelation about Jesus Christ, his words, works, and ways.
Who is God really? He is offensive, anarchic by the world’s standards, and far too gracious to people who don’t deserve his time or attention.