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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Lent is a gift to the Church from the Church. It belongs to all Christians who desire to be conformed to the likeness of our Lord.
The Promise Land's true value is in the gift of Jesus who will provide His blood and very life to endow all people with forgiveness and everlasting life for His children.
Nearly two thousand years after Paul scribbled out these lines, the only reason “we” are here, reading Paul’s magnum opus together, is that we are inheritors of the promise Paul sees in the paradox.
As the greater and more faithful Son of God, Jesus did what the Israelites could not do. Neither can we.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
An immense amount of ink has been spilled contesting and interpreting Bonhoeffer's significance as a figure of Christian history and a theologian of the church.
Aquinas would craft a systematic theology that did with the matter of faith what Aristotle had done with the natural world.
Even for idolatrous sellouts like you and me, God’s position has not changed. Even though we may have forgotten him, he never forgets us.
Not only does Scripture command us to maintain purity of doctrine and practice, it also commands us to reconcile with our brother, to seek to end division, and recognize common ground where there is common ground.
The Advents of Christ (past, present, and future) elicit faith in the word of Christ, confirmed by his presence.
The thought of losing even one of those for whom his Son died pains God beyond belief, and the angels rejoice when even one of his children repents.
Fourteen years ago, drowning in the muck of dark despair, in the middle of a life gone terribly wrong, I wrote in my journal, "I wonder how, once this is all over, how I’ll be, how I’ll turn out…” Now I know.