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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I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
The following is an excerpt from Chad Bird’s new book, Your God Is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places (Baker Book, 2018).
When I was a boy, I wanted to be a trashman. Little did I know that I would grow up to need a God who was a trashman.
While I was still an over-eager seminarian the professor warned me, “Mr. Riley, this is exciting stuff.
Freedom from the Law does not come through personal perfection, it comes through Jesus Christ. The answer is not a better you, but a you who is united to God through Christ.
Only a god could be wise. We are seekers, lovers of divine wisdom, but it is forever beyond our grasp due to human limitation.
Jesus tears down every “but” that people try to build between us and God. He died and rose for us, and—not but—He makes Himself our Lord and Savior.
You are made new by the eternal satisfaction for sin in Christ, by the precious treasure at God’s right hand.
God’s justification of us does not happen secretly in our spirits. God justifies you and me in His absolving Word