Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
Our Father works through us to meet the needs of others and to meet our need for Savior Jesus.
Jesus is the end of religion.
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
Whatever we call “god,” how we act out our “religion,” what we call “living,” if its name isn’t Jesus, it’s a sham.
When we focus on God's self-giving Word, when we turn our attention to Golgotha, we are shown a wholly different way of viewing the Commandments.
I’ve always been more at home in the Old Testament than in the New Testament.
Our gods expect us to be perfect, pure, and in constant control of our feelings and thoughts.
His consolation will accompany us in the midst of sickness and death. He will strengthen us, even strengthen us to carry the cross of old age.
At Golgotha, Jesus saves us from sin by becoming sin for us. Jesus takes all our messes, all our shame, all our guilt, all our fears and insecurities and He allows them to kill Him instead of us.
In elementary school, children are taught that America was a destination for Christians in search of religious freedom. But that’s not the truth.