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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Luther's emphasis on the need for sinners to have preachers who can provide them with the comfort and support they need for their faith in Jesus Christ and life is as relevant today as it was in his time.
Christ's words of exclusive salvation are not just a warning but a sure promise for you.
The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
Only by accurately and honestly reporting the views of those with whom we disagree can we then properly address and refute them. This is the approach Solberg has taken.
This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
Some explanations are better than others, but they remain our explanations—except if we had some perspective from outside, above, and behind nature.
The hardest thing you and I will ever be called to do is to believe that it is done already, that it really and truly is finished.
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.
Predestination, Jim knew, is no longer a frightening doctrine of mystery when you understand that God makes his choice about you in the simple word of God, given from one sinner to another.
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.