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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My words are peanuts compared to the porterhouse of God’s Word.
The one who embodies the dove, that is, the Holy Spirit will be mounted upon the staff of Calvary.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
The legal record of debt for our sin was canceled because Jesus satisfied the legal demands for us by his life, death, and resurrection.
If you are going to lose your life for the gospel’s sake, you must begin by hearing it.
Cyril’s fervor for pure explication of the gospel was present throughout his career.
Vilification of the other is married to the justification of the self.
In Jesus, the most totalizing summary of the law becomes the gospel of the one made perfect through obedience.
Moses is no Jesus but he, like us, is saved by Him. The law cannot enter the promised land, and yet the true and greater promised land is occupied by nothing but lawbreakers.
There’s no possibility of understanding the grace of Romans 6 and the glory of Romans 8 unless you identify with the excruciating struggle of Romans 7.
FLAME uses Scripture and church history to argue that baptism is a gospel gift, not our work.
God has a plan for this world that he put into place from eternity, a plan that is carried out in Jesus Christ and promises unimaginably great blessings for believers.