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 entrance of children into the world reminds our world of the hope of redemption in Genesis 3:15.
The goal of language in the mouth of a Christian isn’t to hold power for ourselves but to give it.
Man and woman together are complete. Apart, they are incomplete. The two correspond and form “one flesh” when combined in sexual relationships and as helpmates.
Except for the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521 were the most important of his writings.
For Luther, Erasmus’ Christ-less, Spirit-less theological conclusions demonstrated that behind his supposed humanistic optimism lay a profound despair and pessimism.
What is it to perform the Word? Is it to speak about it, to retell it, to illustrate it, to enlighten it? What?
For Erasmus, it would be better for people in general to bear the disease of moralism and choice than to be cured of it by the preaching and teaching of God’s unconditional election of sinners in Christ.
Rachel was the beloved wife, to be sure, but she was not the maternal link between Eve and Mary. That blessed position belonged to Leah.
Jesus’s freedom is different. It isn’t meant to indicate that the moorings which tether men and women to what is true, beautiful, and holy are unfastened, liberating them to do anything they please.
The upright, in whom the law has exercised its work, when they feel their sickness and weakness, say: God will help me; I trust in him; I build upon him; he is my rock and hope.
The grass withered for them too, but they held on to God’s Word. They knew that was eternal, so they lived in it. They lived in his forgiveness.
To act according to a “theology of glory” that exalts in money and status at the cost of your brothers and sisters who are hurting or suffering in any way is to act in the opposite way of Christ.