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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It is terribly easy to set up our theology as a buffer against the real coming of the Lord and its consequences.
You are the friend in low places. It’s only from this place that you are free to look outside yourself for the remedy to the issues that plague you and humanity.
Weak faith in a strong Christ is still saving faith.
The words of Jesus shine with a graceful brilliance among the broken fragments of this world.
Through water, blood, and word, the Spirit never stops pointing us to Christ, and even more, giving us Christ.
Even though All Saints is a day for remembering the dead, it is not a day of mourning.
There is no true life and meaningful community apart from forgiveness.
Every incendiary move of God’s Spirit is accompanied by a group of penitent people rediscovering the power and preeminence of God’s Word.
To preach Christ and Him crucified is to reveal again the revealed God who saves.
The reason that God’s commandments are not burdensome is that Jesus has fulfilled them.
Both now and forever, the bruised and crucified Lord nailed to a cross is our assurance of deliverance.
Righteousness before God is possessed only by grace and that through the currency of faith.