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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This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
I can guarantee you that when Paul was overtaken by the Spirit and inspired to write these words, he did not have in mind your local school's boys' basketball tournament.
To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
“So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
Zephaniah has given us something more visceral to help us understand the love of God: the sound of salvation.
Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
The gospel's message is the scandalous announcement that Yahweh has stooped to our frame, to where we are.
Fullness, truth, reality – all this God gives us as his gift in Christ.