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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“The well that washes what it shows” captures the essence of Linebaugh’s project, which aims to give the paradigmatic law-gospel hermeneutic a colloquial and visual language.
If Psalms 1 and 2 reveal the Christ who reigns, Psalms 3 and 4 reveal the Christ who remains.
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.
This is the fifth installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.
When a congregation is abused by its pastor, it loses more than a shepherd. It loses its threshold place; that fragile seam between earth and heaven.
The Antichrist offers another continual presence. It is every whisper that tempts us toward autonomy, that tells us to carry it alone, that insists suffering is meaningless.
When your child asks about what we believe, and why we believe it…answer.
The Word seems like it is so little, like five barley loaves and two small fish, but it is all that God used to create the heavens and the earth.
Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.
Instead of offering more details or more information, he does something even better: he promises his very presence.
Chapter 3 of Habakkuk, which is often referred to as “the Psalm of Habakkuk,” is a song of catharsis, relief, faith, and profound emotion.
‘Peace’ means “I have forgiven all those sins against me.”