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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We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.
The name of God invites us on a journey to see how God will remain present with his people, listen to their cries for salvation, know their sufferings in such an intimate way so as to incarnate them in Christ.
The good news is that with our God there is always more: more than we deserve, dare, ask, or expect, more than we can see, hear, feel, or think.
Every incendiary move of God’s Spirit is accompanied by a group of penitent people rediscovering the power and preeminence of God’s Word.
The phrase “works of the law” has an antithesis when it comes to righteousness—faith. What keeping the Law could not do, the gift of faith does.
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.
The love mentioned in 1 John 4:15-21 fourteen times (!) is a love that needs no apology but is determined at all times to sacrifice for the other.
Logos theology is a theology of presence without division. It is a way of unification, of which the incarnation is the greatest visible example.
Sometimes in hanging on to our useless guilt, we are idolaters. We believe our sin or conscience is more powerful than our God.
We can appreciate what we have received from God, we can receive it all as free gift, but only when we stop investing in fool's gold.
To say that whoever loves has been born of God is also to say that those who are born of God are recipients of love. They do not have God because they love but because they are loved.