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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When I finished this book, I loved the Bible, and the Bible’s author, even more. And I can’t imagine a better endorsement than that.
Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
Hains offers a novel yet simple contention: Luther is most catholic where he is boldest.
By his first Advent in the flesh, through his second Advent with bread and wine and water and Word, we await his third Advent at the end.
We will not become hopeless because the Lord is with us.