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 acquisition of salvation, the giving of salvation, and the keeping of salvation are entirely dependent upon the Savior himself.
What Luther is doing in his Catechism is teaching how the gospel is an action of the whole Trinity, not just one of the persons.
The story of Juneteenth is one of living between proclamation and emancipation, and the story of the Christian faith is one of living in that same tension.
The one true God has revealed himself as the answer to the longings of every human heart. The search has ended. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Holy, Holy, Holy.
God bestows faith that it should deal not with ordinary things, but with things no human being can master such as death, sin, the world, and Satan.
The world’s history and Jewish history was like a story in search of an ending; and when Jesus rose from the dead the ending was now revealed.
For those of us who recognize the disciples’ despair in ourselves, Jesus comes with the same word: “Relax, it’s me. Peace be with you.”
The Holy Spirit does what his name implies. He makes us holy. We believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and come to him only by the Holy Spirit who calls us with the gospel.
This is an excerpt from Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2021). Available for purchase this Tuesday!
Undue Protestant antipathies toward Mary have muted not only her place in redemption history and its necessary connection to Christology, but also the virtue of virginity.
Being able to tell the difference between truth and lies is at the core of repentance.
It’s not the disciples’ faith that invented the resurrection but the resurrection that gave birth to the disciples’ faith.