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

If you get out your red-letter bible and just read the red letters, as I did today, you're in for a shock. When you read just his words, Jesus seems harsh and pretty ticked off most of the time!
Love continues to gently but endlessly pursue the narrator, despite his persistence in pulling away in the opposite direction.
Jesus has the best Dad ever, but He doesn’t keep His Dad all to himself. Jesus shares His Heavenly Father with everyone who believes in Him.
Unlike human marriage, which is marred by sin, Jesus never seeks to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences.
As we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray to God our Father. We come to him as his children, adopted into his family. We pray to our Father who loves us perfectly.
Good works do not make a Christian, do not secure the grace of God and blot out our sins, they do not merit heaven.
This is an excerpt from “Unveiling Mercy: 365 Daily Devotions Based on Insights from Old Testament Hebrew” written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2020). Used with permission.
How we define holiness will affect our approach to God.
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).
The quality of our walk with Jesus is not predicated on anything we do, for the only thing we bring to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.
The love God showed for us in the death of his Son continues in us because we remain his children as long as we are incorporated in the body of Jesus through faith.
This is an excerpt from “The Freedom of the Christian” written by Martin Luther and translated and edited by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2020).