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 world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Our hope is God's mercy. It's like a well that never dries up. His mercies were there before he created us. They are present for us today.
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.
Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.
God's power and works are awesome and cannot be stifled. His grace and mercy will be heard above the growls and howls of those who deny Christ Jesus is God and Savior
Our only claim to fame is that we have been claimed by a God who is consistently drawn to losers!
Christ has received the mark of law that we might be marked with the gospel, with the sign of his holy cross on our heads and hearts as redeemed children of God.
Love turns out to be not simply a thing or action, but a characteristic of God himself.
Moses was sent to keep the house in order, but this Child is sent to bring the house home, and you are part of that house, the household of God.
Getting ready for Christ’s coming is a practice in humility.
The Word of Yahweh is not a trifling thing that can be visited only when it’s convenient. It’s a book of life, for all of life, that imparts life to those who believe in it and the God of it.
The youths that mock Elisha are representative of Israel’s collective contempt and disregard for all things relating to their One True God.