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 in your lows where Christ has hidden his highest high, eternal life itself.
The Reformation was yet another era of history when God’s people were faced with the question that Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
A Sermon on Psalm 130:3–6.
This book is for people who want to get serious about the church. It’s for pastors who are sick and tired of surfing the latest wave or jumping from one program to the other.
In contrast to the human courts of our land, the Divine court never makes errors nor excuses
The same Spirit who gives us his overabundant life has also given us doctrine. Scripture and Spirit cannot be put in opposition to each other.
Erasmus sought to find meaning behind the words of Scripture in order to make an ultimate claim. Luther, on the other hand, found the Gospel to be meaningless outside of Christ and his Cross.
While the insights in each chapter are uniquely personal to the individual writers, the overarching theme is one of the sufficiency of Christ.
Wilson reminds his reader over and over again that, in his love, God accepts sinners as they are so that we may be delivered from the self-acceptance, self-worship, and self-justification of our selfish definitions of love.
Luther understood when the Word of God came it did not offer sinners a choice.
Christ has taken our failures and defeats and exchanges that yoke for his own.