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 Lord has remembered to help his servant Israel, to fulfill his promises to Abraham and to his offspring forever, not mostly or mainly because of his mercy, but exclusively so.
Jesus weeps because his heart pulses with furious rage and fierce love.
Christ shows up in the middle of our storms and our nightmares. That’s where he sets up shop.
Is salvation by the law or not? Moses or Jesus? Indeed, we find a fundamental parting of the ways put forward here, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
In the tumultuous sea of information, opinions, and ideologies that break over us each day, we hold fast to the anchor of our faith—Jesus, the true prophet.
A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
Grace comes for every foolish, self-absorbed sinner, for every “Nabal,” and announces that there is one who has already taken it upon himself to shoulder all of our wrongdoing, paying the price for it through the sacrifice of himself.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
Caesar boasted: “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Christ can rightly say: “I came. I saved. I ascended.”
Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
This is the Christian word: grace. Such grace is found only with this Lamb who is also our Shepherd.