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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Dyson demonstrated a pious persistence with Lewis, something we can emulate in our own friendships and conversations.
Thanks to Barfield’s opposition, several important things happened to C.S. Lewis.
The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
What if Jesus had said on the cross, “Earn it”?
Is salvation by the law or not? Moses or Jesus? Indeed, we find a fundamental parting of the ways put forward here, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
The gospel tells me that the revelation of weakness in myself, my husband, and my son is the occasion for the revelation of God’s strength.
When properly distinguishing law and gospel in the Word of God, it is important to use the God-given gift and abilities of the imagination as your ears.
We live for the most part, on the strength of our moral fiber, under the law, by our zeal for God and all that which tickles our proud fancy.
His successes were not the result of his brilliance, might, and ability as an apostle. They were the result of the all-sufficient grace of God.
The Holy Spirit isn’t so much the one you look at, as he is the one who turns you from looking at yourself and your sin to your Savior, Jesus.
Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.