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 grace of God does not save us at the beginning only in order to keep ourselves in his good graces by our good enough readiness.
The new life Christ opened for us in His justifying resurrection, the new life into which we were baptized is a life of faith.
Baptism is always valid because no unrighteousness or faithlessness on our part could ify God’s faithfulness.
It isn’t that God struggles to believe our repeated cries of “wolf.” Rather, we struggle to believe God when he repeatedly comes to us with forgiveness and mercy on his lips.
The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.
Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.
Blessed are we, for we are filled by the cornucopia of Christ’s righteousness.
God’s love is axiomatic; it just is. It’s a truism without a logical explanation.
The only one rightful heir of the kingdom of God, inherits from us, our cross, and descends into the kingdom of the damned.
Christ strikes a blow first against the presumption of those who would storm their way into heaven by their good works.