The women at the tomb were surprised by Easter. Amazed and filled with wonder at Jesus' Easter eucatastrophe. And so are we.
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.

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History is the painful realization that we aren’t the ones who can save the world but, rather, we’re the ones who get saved.
In Jesus, the most totalizing summary of the law becomes the gospel of the one made perfect through obedience.
But it is not always helpful to create tidy categories of good and bad and to say, “Stop being ‘a Martha’ and do a better job of being ‘a Mary.’” That is a dangerous sermon to preach. In doing so, we can fall into the very thing we see Martha doing.
Moses is no Jesus but he, like us, is saved by Him. The law cannot enter the promised land, and yet the true and greater promised land is occupied by nothing but lawbreakers.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is both a call to faith in Jesus and a call to love our neighbor.
The world hates Jesus because he comes to lead us to love and forgive all, including our enemies.
Despite the very real obstacles and difficulties, this entire scene is marked by God’s gracious work.
It’s God’s power that we are dealing with here that is made perfect in weakness, not ours. God’s power is made perfect in the weakness of the cross.
Because of Jesus, God always hears our prayers, and he always responds to them in love–regardless of the quality or quantity of the one speaking them.
There’s no possibility of understanding the grace of Romans 6 and the glory of Romans 8 unless you identify with the excruciating struggle of Romans 7.
The only solution to free will is the announcement from a preacher that the Father forgives us for Christ's sake.
FLAME uses Scripture and church history to argue that baptism is a gospel gift, not our work.