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

Sin will constantly break our hearts, but God's love in Christ Jesus will give us new hearts daily, in the abundance of his forgiving grace. This is love in its purest form, and he has overcome the world.
Christ teaches that we are not lost, but have eternal life. That God has so loved us that he allowed the ransom to cost him his only beloved child.
God and love are synonymous. Any talk about love that is not talk about Jesus is, at most, a half-truth.
There is true help in the midst of our pain. Someone who suffered as we suffer, who embraced all our pain in his suffering and death on a cross.
The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw," written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
I venture to assert I have never read, in the entire Scriptures, words more beautifully expressive of the grace of God than these two children words.
Whoever you are, your Father loves you differently than he loves other people. You are more than a grain of sand in the vast desert called humanity.
We think that if we are good enough, brave enough, or at least if we try hard enough, we will be someone who can be both fully known and fully loved.
At Christmas, we hear the story of our salvation, but it’s not pretty.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
True love isn't a thing. We can't find true love in our souls, soul mates, or safe spaces. We can't marry true love, buy it, or create it from scratch.