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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The Holy Spirit keeps us in faith and pours us out into the world so others may also hear and believe.
While the Holy Spirit does work within us, He always comes to us from the outside, through the external Word and Sacraments.
Today’s advice for the anxious and worried would have likely horrified Luther.
In life, we make decisions, from the most basic to the most lasting, lacking specific knowledge about the outcome.
Thomas was without a doubt a skeptic. And he was a skeptic without a doubt.
Jesus has won the battle. The war is over. In His death, the victory’s sure.
The words “for you” are what deliver burdened hearts into the glorious light of freedom, for they deliver the precious, life-giving cargo of God’s relentless grace to each of us.
Christ triumphantly brings about a new day, an eighth day, the first day of a new week.
Temporal resurrections do not save us, but instead direct us to look for life, even in death. Easter zombies and the like direct our attention to the ultimate promise given in Christ, and the implications of this promise for the whole world.
We live because Christ did not remain in the grave but rose to life.
Jesus didn’t simply vacate the tomb to end death. He brought up from that grave the seeds of a brand new start at life. Genesis 1 all over again, with no chance of Genesis 3.
And when He says, “It is finished,” He doesn’t just mean His life and ministry. He means you, your sin, your brokenness, and ultimately your death.