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

This creed is no mere squabble over words. Salvation is on the line.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.
Perhaps best known for his “wager,” Pascal is often associated with this curious argument for the existence of God and eternal blessedness.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Throughout the centuries, “Inferno” has also played a large role in the development of Christianity, particularly in the Western Medieval church.
Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
When orthodoxy becomes a Law, heterodoxy can feel like the Gospel.
He is significant, not as a founder of his own movement, but for setting the procrustean bed of the particularly American church with its dogmatizing yet broad ecumenical stances.
The truth is that no amount of self-awareness will ever be enough; in fact, the more we seek after ourselves, the more inwardly bent we become.
Being a member of a church connects people to the whole reason the church has for existing: that we might obtain justifying faith in Jesus Christ through Word and Sacrament.
If I’m going to join your church, there’s some things I’ll need to know first. I need to know whether you practice a Christianity that’s primarily a to-do list.
As one substance, Christ is God become man, the fullness of God who was pleased to dwell in Jesus Christ.