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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There is no other transitionary event in human history that warrants three full months of focused attention and persistent acknowledgment than the incarnation of the Son of God.
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
With the help of over 250 donors, we reached and exceeded our Giving Tuesday goal late Tuesday evening. At the end of the day, we raised $201,664, which is a record-breaking day of fundraising for us as an organization. Thank you for your support in extending the Gospel work of our organization.
In Advent we wait, in Christmas we rejoice over the coming of Christ in the fulfillment of the promises, and in Epiphany we celebrate the surprise, the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.
In the Lord’s Thanksgiving Supper, we are not served turkey, green bean casserole, and cornbread. We are served Christ.
That's how true faith talks. It doesn't talk about itself. It says "Thank you!" to the one who gives healing and salvation.
Look the judge in the eye and pin your sin on Jesus, the divine judge’s son. Jesus knows you can’t do it, so he trades places with you and pits himself against God’s righteous demands.
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.
The Reformation was yet another era of history when God’s people were faced with the question that Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
We won’t use the right words, but the Holy Spirit is interceding with and for us, as we pray.
Without the sacraments, God’s grace is simply an artifact behind a glass-case in a museum. We might be able to describe and even admire it, but we never get firsthand access to it.
A Sermon on Psalm 130:3–6.