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.

All Articles

Every day is a Sabbath for Christians. Every day is the day the Lord has made. Every day is a day to find rest in Christ.
This parable does its surprising work of turning everything upside-down, as Christ’s Kingdom always does.
The love mentioned in 1 John 4:15-21 fourteen times (!) is a love that needs no apology but is determined at all times to sacrifice for the other.
We can appreciate what we have received from God, we can receive it all as free gift, but only when we stop investing in fool's gold.
The Kingdom will be manifest when the King wills it, and rest assured, He is a good King.
To say that whoever loves has been born of God is also to say that those who are born of God are recipients of love. They do not have God because they love but because they are loved.
Jesus cares about the daily details of ordinary bodies and creaturely comforts, just as He cares about the eternal well-being of our souls.
On the one hand, forgiving as Jesus commands us feels impossible. But on the other hand, forgiving as we have been forgiven is the most natural thing in the world
Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.
Jesus came to His own people to bridge the rift which exists between humankind and God.
Hope is found precisely while we’re dead.
It’s the notion of mercy that leads us to the atonement, and it is the atonement that provides a foundational basis for the justification of sinners.