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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Paul knew, and so do we: the law doesn’t change hearts or heal the world. More demands won’t do the trick.
God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.
What does being free from sin, which is obviously a good thing, have to do with being free from the Law, which sounds dangerous?
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
People do not seek the gospel because they want to, but because God’s Word drives them to it.
Hannah’s story is the story of God’s great reversal.
St John of the Cross' feast day on December 14 commemorates the day of his death in 1591, at the height of the Catholic renewal movement that followed the Reformation.
It wasn’t a perfect image, but it was still there, even in its cartoonish movie magic distortion. It was an element of the Gospel right there in front of me.
Many of us have experienced what it feels like to wait and to remain patient this year. This Advent, we are reminded of how the saints before us experienced similar feelings of uncertainty, need, and hopeful expectation as they awaited - both faithfully and unfaithfully - for God to fulfill his promises.
Trusting Jesus, worshipping our Christ, and praising him, we have the blessing of God so that we can give thanks with a grateful heart for everything he gives to us today and always.
Like Luther and like Hannah, we also receive God’s promise.
Where there’s more sin, there’s more grace! Are you comfortable with that? That the greater the sin, the greater the grace? Could it be that easy?