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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God is in control, but God is also in relationship with His children and asks us to pray, to lament, and to ask Him to change His mind as we participate as the Bride with our Bridegroom.
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 the place of God, Marx sets the material, autonomous, self-creating man.
Whatever body part you are, the body of Christ is no pod person. Together, we’re a living, breathing, deathless whole.
Neomonasticism—that is, the idea that church work is more important than regular work—implies that God cares more about the spiritual than the physical.
Christian mercy should not seek its own. It must be round, and open its eyes and look at all alike, friend and foe, as our heavenly Father does.
The worship service is less like servants entering the throne room to wait on the king’s needs and more like a father joining his family around the dining room table.
How do we preach a text of exhortation while keeping the sermon Gospel-centered?
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.
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.
The question is, how are you going to live out your life as someone who has taken up the Robe of Freedom?