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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You are the friend in low places. It’s only from this place that you are free to look outside yourself for the remedy to the issues that plague you and humanity.
You are a child of God. You’re blameless, holy, perfect, and righteous. Don’t feel that way? Too bad. God is greater than your heart.
We look forward to the return of Christ, which fills us with hope that there really is an end to this marathon called life.
Preachers and church workers must also hear the gospel preached to them.
Weak faith in a strong Christ is still saving faith.
Only by faith can we believe the mystery that salvation in all it various forms comes through Jesus, the Son of Righteousness.
We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.
The name of God invites us on a journey to see how God will remain present with his people, listen to their cries for salvation, know their sufferings in such an intimate way so as to incarnate them in Christ.
Every incendiary move of God’s Spirit is accompanied by a group of penitent people rediscovering the power and preeminence of God’s Word.
The phrase “works of the law” has an antithesis when it comes to righteousness—faith. What keeping the Law could not do, the gift of faith does.
No efforts to create worship as a delectable dish to attract people to our services will ever work, because it is only what God gives to us in His Word and Sacrament that can satisfy the hungry and thirsty soul.
The reason that God’s commandments are not burdensome is that Jesus has fulfilled them.