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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While Thoreau’s Walden is seen as a central text of that most American of virtues—self-reliance—quiet ambition as envisioned by Tinetti is exactly the opposite: dependence on God.
On this, the birthday of Martin Luther, I will pause to thank God for his birth.
Something Reformation Christians ought to do is familiarize themselves with Roman Catholic theology.
The testimony of the Word assures us that God isn’t waiting for us at the top of the stairs, with arms folded and brows furrowed.
The Protestant milieu was pervaded with the announcement that God and God alone is the active agent in the salvation of sinners.
Protestants, in my view, don’t suffer from a Goldilocks problem. They have an arrogance problem.
We need redemption, and we receive it in our church community through God’s Word.
Just as each servant was sent to bring back the Master’s fruit, so did God send his prophets to bring back the fruits of a life shaped by the Word.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.
Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
Because Jesus Taught It. By Flame. Concordia Publishing House. Paperback. 205 pages. List price: $17.99.