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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From the beginning to the end of his letter, John really wants one thing: for us to be in Jesus.
The reason that God’s commandments are not burdensome is that Jesus has fulfilled them.
Both now and forever, the bruised and crucified Lord nailed to a cross is our assurance of deliverance.
The love mentioned in 1 John 4:15-21 fourteen times (!) is a love that needs no apology but is determined at all times to sacrifice for the other.
We can appreciate what we have received from God, we can receive it all as free gift, but only when we stop investing in fool's gold.
To say that whoever loves has been born of God is also to say that those who are born of God are recipients of love. They do not have God because they love but because they are loved.
Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.
Hope is found precisely while we’re dead.
Lord, today we remember...
St. Paul extends to us the call to arms. In particular, there is one weapon which is effective against so elusive an enemy. The weapon is prayer.
Walking in the light doesn't entail a spotless moral record but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.