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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Maybe it was because I read this book to put myself to sleep. But maybe the lack of any Christian references was part of my sadness.
It is precisely from the cross that the glory of God shines most brightly into our lives, as dark and sinister as Golgotha appears from a sinful distance. Cross trumps crisis.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
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Rest doesn’t come cheap. Perhaps there’s no scarcer commodity in our time. Plenty sell it, but there’s no warranty, and it seldom lasts.
The sword of the spirit in Holy Scripture does indeed show us our sin, but thanks be to God, it also shows us our Savior.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
In Israel, once a year, a priestly climber would reach the peak of a very different kind of mountain. Here's his story.
Our hope is God's mercy. It's like a well that never dries up. His mercies were there before he created us. They are present for us today.
Even for idolatrous sellouts like you and me, God’s position has not changed. Even though we may have forgotten him, he never forgets us.
If we think God’s power, love and beauty are reserved merely for the glories of Transfiguration, then we have not understood the Father; we have not understood divine revelation.
Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.