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 Seed of the woman is he who will crush the head of the evil one and restore man to a right and proper relationship with God.
This article is the second installment in an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.
What a person quickly realizes when sin, death, and Satan attack in concrete reality is how inadequate and ill-equipped they are to fight them off.
John Pless offers thoughts on preaching for your midweek Lent sermons.
This post contains notes on orders of service, texts, and hymns for your midweek Lent services.
God interrupts Peter, but not only to quiet him. He also directs Peter to listen to someone else.
The coming of Jesus the Son was the fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises and prophesies, types and covenants. His resurrection and, as Peter asserts here, His transfiguration proved it.
Because God makes the rules He is free to break them when He chooses, however, God only breaks His own rules on the side of grace!
Christianity has never been about getting people to clam up and look the part. It’s about Christ calling sinners to himself.
The implications were clear: Jesus’ death destroyed the things that distinguished people as educated or uneducated, rich or poor, free or enslaved, black or white, pious or godless.
Virtue, like all good things, can easily be weaponized. And not only can, but constantly is. Indeed, I would argue that, for churchgoing, rule-following, tradition-honoring, morality-applauding people, virtue often becomes the cancer that we deem a badge of honor.
The Church gathers around the Word and Sacrament in order to receive Christ and each other.