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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The reason that God’s commandments are not burdensome is that Jesus has fulfilled them.
Both now and forever, the bruised and crucified Lord nailed to a cross is our assurance of deliverance.
Righteousness before God is possessed only by grace and that through the currency of faith.
This parable does its surprising work of turning everything upside-down, as Christ’s Kingdom always does.
Jesus is the only one who is His brothers’ keeper on behalf of all of humanity and the only one who answered the rhetorical question fully and correctly for you.
Jesus speaks His Word, and a new world order emerges, with the possibility of uniting disparate parties in the true faith.
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.
Paul calls them the fruits of the Spirit after all
The true masterpiece of the Bible’s narrative is that we are blessed not in the way we want but in the way God gives freely on account of Christ alone.
The Kingdom will be manifest when the King wills it, and rest assured, He is a good King.
The Word and the Spirit go together. The Spirit, the breath of God, illumines and makes alive through the Word of God; both written and external, that is, preached and sacramented.