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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God has in fact executed his plans for his people, plans of peace (probably a better translation than welfare), a future, and a hope in Jesus Christ.
Except for the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521 were the most important of his writings.
God uses the unlikely, the unexpected, and sometimes even the unsavory to deliver us and to crush the heads of his enemies
The grass withered for them too, but they held on to God’s Word. They knew that was eternal, so they lived in it. They lived in his forgiveness.
A seed grows the kingdom of God. A whisper eventually turns the world upside down. A carpenter’s son from nowhere becomes the Savior of everyone. Such is God’s way.
Today, we begin a short series profiling women in the Bible (Who are not named Ruth or Esther). Both the stories of Ruth and Esther are beautiful, gracious, and profound. We love reading and rereading them. However, in an attempt to bring attention to more stories of more women throughout the Scriptures, we choose now to shift our focus. Our first woman, is, the first woman herself: Eve.
Let us move beyond the milk and onto solid food — the meat of biblical, creedal, confessional theology in our preaching.
The night has passed and the day broken. In response to the morning dawn, birds sing, beasts arouse themselves and all humanity arises.
Calvary is our mountain of pardon. It is the place which reveals most definitively God’s plan to redeem and reconcile sinners to himself.
As the body positivity movement has gained traction, we must also be aware of some of its pitfalls
What God created, God will grow. We don’t add a few stitches onto his creation.
The new life Christ opened for us in His justifying resurrection, the new life into which we were baptized is a life of faith.