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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Cranach became the evangelical interpreter for the masses
There is only one antidote to the venom of sin and death: the Savior who becomes the serpent so that every snake-bitten-sinner might live.
We need to know the Christian faith—such as it does not capitulate with Zeitgeist—always comes with a price of being maligned, persecuted, marginalized, blamed, you name it.
When offering encouragement to His disciples to follow Him, Jesus did not promise a pain-free life in this world. Instead, He highlighted the struggle and the difficulty. Why?
As is often the case in Scripture, creation is about a renewed, restored, and redeemed relationship with the Creator.
God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
Take heart: God is near and he is here for you.
The battle is not so much recognizing sins as admitting them. It is also not so much confessing them as repenting them or laying them aside. But we can do it. Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith...
The real presence of the LORD does not pop-up unannounced when Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper—it has been a theme from the days in the Garden of Eden when He walked and talked with His people.
This is true discipleship. We live with Jesus, we hold on to Jesus, we suffer with Jesus, because Jesus brings a divisive peace that saves.
There is power in the name of Jesus, and we love to manipulate power for our own ends.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.