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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Our value and our values, our life, our everything is from Jesus Christ given to us as a gift.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
Sometimes I think we should be more tempted to laugh at the gospel than we are, not in derision but in sheer surprise and awe.
History is the painful realization that we aren’t the ones who can save the world but, rather, we’re the ones who get saved.
The undercurrent of Scripture is the sheer fact that Jehovah God is a God of his word.
The worship service is less like servants entering the throne room to wait on the king’s needs and more like a father joining his family around the dining room table.
In the face of abject evil, these two faithfully cling to the words and truths of he alone who is Good, Jehovah God.
On May 2nd, Cantate Sunday, in the year 1507, Luther celebrated his first Mass.
What the gospel promises is not escape from our humanity, but resurrection from the dead.
Sometimes loss is gain. Sometimes defeat is victory. Sometimes weakness is strength. Sometimes death is life. Sometimes, that is, when Christ is at the center, on his cross and not in his tomb.
If there were ever any doubt about God's commitment to humanity, the incarnation removed that doubt. God became a man forever. And thus he is our brother, our kinsman redeemer, the God who would move heaven and earth to save us.
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.