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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When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
We expect that if it is God’s word, it must have fallen out of the sky on golden plates.
The first course is always humble pie because, at the table, there are just two seats: from humiliation to exaltation.
God is the God of failures, for He became one for you. There is no failure of ours that is bigger than Jesus’ cross, no sin of ours that can overshadow the cross.
Mordor’s bleak existence and the successful salvific mission of Frodo and Samwise is what makes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings such a psychologically enjoyable epic.
The miracle of Pentecost is not obvious; it is the miracle of faith created through the preaching of the word of the cross.
An introduction to Bo Giertz's, Romans: A Devotional Commentary
Jesus is the great Houdini of the grave for us. And through His death, He gives us the Great Escape from death that leads to the great joy of the Resurrection.
The absence of a feeling is not the absence of Christ, but as emotional, rational, and spiritual beings, we cannot say that the presence of Christ necessitates the absence of emotion.
Preaching is a dangerous and difficult task. Some occupations might involve more harrowing situations and circumstances but I will continue to contend that there’s not a more perilous or vulnerable position to be in than behind the pulpit.
His clarity and fearlessness made him a favorite interview subject for the press in both great and small questions.
To lose a leader like this is always too soon!