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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To a world enslaved to time (because it has no future), the Church's disregard for clocks and calendars is ridiculous.
Bearing fruit is wonderful, but you do not stay a Christian through fruit-bearing. You bear fruit and are growing because you are united to Christ.
God is holy, nothing I say or do or pray is going to make God any more or less holy. So what are we praying when we say, “hallowed be your name”?
This is an excerpt from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), written by Martin Luther and translated by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2018).
The following is an excerpt from “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory” written by Steven A. Hein (1517 Publishing, 2015).
Good works do not make a Christian, do not secure the grace of God and blot out our sins, they do not merit heaven.
God uses the fifth commandment to protect us from selfishness, prevent us from only thinking about our needs, and to drive us to Christ and our neighbors.
Christians are in a unique position to show the world something truly other-worldly. We are free from living in our world as if it contained all there is.
How we define holiness will affect our approach to God.
Jesus has conquered the storm’s power to condemn me – for by his death on the cross for my sins, he has removed any barrier between God and myself.
Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaluation of us.
The quality of our walk with Jesus is not predicated on anything we do, for the only thing we bring to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.