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

It is in the midst of a world marked by empty and deceptive hopes that have broken hearts and lives that we are sent to deliver the promise of a future that has as its last chapter the resurrection of the body to eternal life with the Lamb who was slain but is alive forevermore.
Where Erasmus saw fear and collapse, Luther saw the never-ending comfort of Christ and his gospel.
When we hear freedom, we have to ask about its opposite, bondage.
The devil knows our name and labels us by our sin. The devil breathes out death as he names us for what we are, sinners.
Are people so different today? Is justification really irrelevant now? Is the preacher’s only point of contact with the life-giving Gospel a by-product of Microsoft’s word processor? I do not think so.
The kingdom of Christ is realized where nothing but comfort and the forgiveness of sins reign not only in words to proclaim it, which is also necessary; but also in deed.
The articles were used to catechize churches in Lutheran doctrine through a series of pastoral visitations.
A truly Christian work is it that we descend and get mixed up in the mire of the sinner as deeply as he sticks there himself.
[Luther's] Catechism is at home in the evangelical pulpit, guiding and shaping what the preacher says so faith might be created and love given direction.
Martin Luther is not–or, at least should not–be the object of our affection.
The central affirmation of the Reformation stands: Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son
What follows is a little crash course in how to read Calvin with respect, for our benefit, and with an eye to how we keep Reformation giants at a proper historical arms distance.