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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If he was not flesh, who was hung on the cross? And if he was not God, who shook the earth from its foundations?
What is your fight club? Who is your Tyler Durden?
Apart from bare, naked faith in Jesus' atoning work for us, no sinner is, or ever can be, holy.
What on God’s green earth does dynamite, a chemical explosive, have to do with the Gospel of Christ?
Sacrifice is the beating heart of the Scriptures, but also of our Christian faith.
This had been a lonely year, though. She could keep herself busy for a while with friends and she could distract herself for a few weekends by leaving town, but something was definitely missing.
True faith, saving faith that receives the good news about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a faith created in us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel (Eph 2:8-9).
What would be a fitting thing to give up, especially during the season of Lent?
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.
The God who's lifted up above Calvary, abandoned and forsaken, should draw a more discerning crowd of followers.
Inside our heads is a courtroom where our whole lives are put on trial. And we are declared guilty of things. Big things, little things. God things, human things. True things, false things. We never can measure up.
Looking at our dining room table most days, you might think we were running a cartoon factory out of our house. Drawings. Everywhere.