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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God gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
Though it may feel to us like the darkness is winning, God’s Word reveals the darkness is waning. The Light of the world has come.
The Church becomes anti-church when the new world order Christ inaugurated by eliminating demographic division through the commonality of Baptism is exploded by allegiance to cults of personality.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
He will safely birth us from this world, which is like a womb, into Heaven itself. On that day we will truly see the creation as it was made to be, restored and perfect in eternity forever.
When all the people had been baptized, when all the people had washed the filth of their sins into the water, Jesus went into the water to draw their sins unto Himself.
Human history and especially the Christian life have a shape, and Jesus is its shaper at every point, infusing even the mundane and the difficult with sanctifying purposes, ultimate meaning, and enduring hope.
The usual acclamation when one becomes King is: “Long live the King!” But this King of kings, this son of David, has come to die.
As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
Maybe, just maybe, our goal for 2023 should not be to live more but to die more.
Because we could never intuitively figure it out, God reveals Christ to us.
The Lord’s Gospel will attract all the nations to His holy mountain, and people from the ends of the earth will sojourn to the city to bear witness to God’s great work of salvation.