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 the Father sent us – his wayward, sinful, and naughty children – his own series of Father Christmas Letters.
To trust in the Lord, the Messiah, the Deliverer, is our salvation and our only hope. Yet he does not trust us to have this “trust” on our own or of our own will.
Psalm 8 is a trailer for the entire biblical movie, and the entire biblical movie centers on Christ.
Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
Take courage, you who were lost: Jesus comes to seek and save that which is lost. Ye sick, return to health: Christ comes to heal the contrite of heart with the balm of his mercy. Rejoice, all you who desire great things: the Son of God comes down to you that he may make you the co-heirs of his kingdom.
Christmas is a season of irony and song that helps us to know the sacred past and the truth of the Gospel of our salvation.
The lesson of Malachi reveals God’s love for his people. When the people ask for proof of God’s love, he reminds them of their election.
In whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence he might recall them, and teach them of his own true Father, as he himself says: I came to save and to find that which was lost.
A sign was given to Ahaz to point him toward the greater sign given in a manger and that Bethlehem’s Messiah is the sign we look forward to seeing in the sky when Jesus, our Emmanuel, comes again.
We will not become hopeless because the Lord is with us.
The waiting of Advent isn’t just for Christmas; it’s for God’s reversal of all sin and evil and his renewal of all things.
Let us rejoice, then, in this grace so that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience wherein we glory not in ourselves but in the Lord (2 Cor. 1:12).