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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Clarity enables mobility. When preachers make the message clear, the people of God are freed-up to follow Jesus.
This parable does its surprising work of turning everything upside-down, as Christ’s Kingdom always does.
Jesus is the only one who is His brothers’ keeper on behalf of all of humanity and the only one who answered the rhetorical question fully and correctly for you.
Jesus speaks His Word, and a new world order emerges, with the possibility of uniting disparate parties in the true faith.
Paul calls them the fruits of the Spirit after all
The true masterpiece of the Bible’s narrative is that we are blessed not in the way we want but in the way God gives freely on account of Christ alone.
The Kingdom will be manifest when the King wills it, and rest assured, He is a good King.
The Word and the Spirit go together. The Spirit, the breath of God, illumines and makes alive through the Word of God; both written and external, that is, preached and sacramented.
Strategic silence is a sanctified stall tactic which benefits both the preacher and the pew-sitter. It is not just dead air.
In the Reformation, as in the tabernacle, God gave skill, artistry, and craftsmanship to put his Word in images so that through art, his Word would be revealed.
Paul is talking about military-level allegiance here, the strongest kind of allegiance sworn to a king.
Jesus cares about the daily details of ordinary bodies and creaturely comforts, just as He cares about the eternal well-being of our souls.