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.

All Articles

History is the painful realization that we aren’t the ones who can save the world but, rather, we’re the ones who get saved.
In Jesus, the most totalizing summary of the law becomes the gospel of the one made perfect through obedience.
In the place of God, Marx sets the material, autonomous, self-creating man.
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.
Through Martin Luther, God would unleash a far greater storm than the one which overwhelmed Luther on July 2, 1505.
With every bone in our bodies, we declare war on grace. We declare war on the gift.
Christian mercy should not seek its own. It must be round, and open its eyes and look at all alike, friend and foe, as our heavenly Father does.
The undercurrent of Scripture is the sheer fact that Jehovah God is a God of his word.
The world hates Jesus because he comes to lead us to love and forgive all, including our enemies.
The worship service is less like servants entering the throne room to wait on the king’s needs and more like a father joining his family around the dining room table.
It’s God’s power that we are dealing with here that is made perfect in weakness, not ours. God’s power is made perfect in the weakness of the cross.
Because of Jesus, God always hears our prayers, and he always responds to them in love–regardless of the quality or quantity of the one speaking them.