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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Armed with great analogies, airtight logic, and razor sharp wit, Lewis keeps you spellbound from one chapter to another as you find yourself going “further up and further in.”
History won’t judge us, Jesus will. We already have his judgment. He gave it to us from the cross, where he acquitted us with his death.
God has found a way to be God even for the likes of us. He has found a way to save sinners.
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.
You can die now, you can let go, and because that is true, you can begin to live!
Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.
An immense amount of ink has been spilled contesting and interpreting Bonhoeffer's significance as a figure of Christian history and a theologian of the church.
When we read a good story, we sojourn with the characters and authors upon the trail of longing. Such is the pilgrim’s path.
The sword of the spirit in Holy Scripture does indeed show us our sin, but thanks be to God, it also shows us our Savior.
Our only claim to fame is that we have been claimed by a God who is consistently drawn to losers!
What I like about Giertz’s approach is the devotional nature of these commentaries. He’s a pastor concerned with what these texts have to say to us today.
The church is the only place God promises to lift us out of ourselves not in order to become more like God but so that we may finally be freed from our obsession with becoming little gods.