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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We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
Jesus takes that burden away in the “I forgive you and them” and gives us His “light” burden.
This story is all-too-common, and illustrates a key dynamic driving the youth out of church.