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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When I was a young boy I was constantly trying to assert my superiority over my siblings. I had to be the best at everything, and it was easy to believe I was the best.
Just as we believe ourselves to be forgiven because God sees us in Christ, so to forgive others is to see them as God sees them in Christ. To forgive, in other words, is to put God’s eyes in our eyes and our eyes in God’s eyes.
A friend recently told me they had never seen the movie A Christmas Story. “What?!” I exclaimed. “Well, you need to fix that this year.”
My nonfiction reads took me into Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and various varieties of Protestantism. Some of my favorites didn’t fall into neat and tidy categories, such as Jordan Peterson and Richard Selzer. It was difficult to narrow the list down, but here are my 12 1/2 favorites of the year.
This blog is a part of our Advent series on the hope we find in, through and given by Christ. Each week’s installment will look at hope from a different perspective with special emphasis on corresponding passages of Scripture.
Do any of you have one of “those” kids? Every family should have at least one. They humble you.
As much as the devil and doubts may assail me, God has revealed Himself to me in His Word and answered these pesky questions.
He was a beggar on the streets. And, he was as good as dead if he didn't receive a blessing. The words, "you're cursed" haunted his mind.
The Gospel is our freedom from sin. It is Christ in the mirror, Christ for me and for you.
The more that we hear the law, the more we recognize others as those who, like us, are torn and tattered by the wounds of sin and brokenness.
We take what we perceive to be freedom and turn it into a new credo, a new law, an idol to be lifted up and lived out.
Consolation is the breath of life filling our lungs, hearts, and minds with the fresh, incorruptible air of the new creation.