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's a new year, and you are still the same you: a sinner who is simultaneously perfect in every way because Christ declares it to be so.
The love of God is creative, always giving, always reviving.
While Christmas may or may not have pagan roots, it will certainly have a pagan future if Christians lose sight of what it is all about.
In Scripture, laments are raw expressions of grief, but they always point to hope. What if our culture’s obsession with holiday lights is an unconscious way of crying out, “We need good news, and we need it now”?
Show me a sinner, and I’ll write you a story of a God who saves them.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Jesus Christ is relentless. He does not give up. And with him comes the certainty of redemption.
Jesus loved us and gave himself up to save us. He would not abandon you to your hurt or cast you away because of the hurt you caused others.
Let your soul grieve, yes, but don’t let it be eaten alive by worry.
Jesus has instituted his living-breathing disciples, his shepherds in his church, to declare the full forgiveness of sins.
To obtain this righteousness, you have to admit you don’t have it and could never produce it on your own because you are unrighteous.