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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So what, if anything, makes us different from those who are waiting on the grassy knoll in Dallas, TX? Can we be any more sure of our belief in the resurrection?
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
The Word of Yahweh is not a trifling thing that can be visited only when it’s convenient. It’s a book of life, for all of life, that imparts life to those who believe in it and the God of it.
That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
Our experience with good fathers – even when they are not our own – can point us to God the Father.
What do Habakkuk and Israel have? Nothing but the word of God. Nothing but the promise of God. Nothing but God himself.
In contrast to the human courts of our land, the Divine court never makes errors nor excuses
One could reason that God might, at least, give the church a little worldly power.
Trust may risk, but trust produces a sense of assurance letting us rest easy and enjoy peace while it drives us to ventures which may seem dangerous but are possible to do because trust defies the dangers.
Wilson reminds his reader over and over again that, in his love, God accepts sinners as they are so that we may be delivered from the self-acceptance, self-worship, and self-justification of our selfish definitions of love.