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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The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
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.
Prayer is not just about asking for things. It's about receiving what has already been given to us in Christ.
God wants his word of promise to be the only thing we bank on, the only thing we have confidence in.
What might Christians of the Reformation tradition think of claims like these about the nature of salvation?
The testimony of every son and daughter of God is, God has brought us through.
A father's struggle to pray for his child's healing is one of the most difficult experiences he can face.
What if sin was truly removed and what if the one who took it from us had the power to conquer it’s curse and spit in the face of death?
The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
It’s scary to share my struggle and to show that I have cracks because once I’ve shown my cards, I open myself up for judgment.
Human history, our history, is the story of two Adams with two very different encounters with the devil.
What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.