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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When we — sinful, reprehensible we — become the enforcers of justice, we never bring about true justice. We either go too far or not far enough.
Christ has taken our failures and defeats and exchanges that yoke for his own.
Even if not a turning point, 1518 is a point of no return for Luther.
The Son of God is still God the Son in the Incarnation.
The way to salvation does not consist in works invented by men, but that which leads to God is believing and trusting in Him.
Our Lord is not only the King of creation but the King of creativity.
God and Jeremiah may have been looking at the same person, but they were seeing very different things.
Grace does not emancipate us from any requirement of obedience. Rather, grace allows Jesus to be obedient on our behalf that the righteous demands of the law can be fulfilled.
God has in fact executed his plans for his people, plans of peace (probably a better translation than welfare), a future, and a hope in Jesus Christ.
The goal of language in the mouth of a Christian isn’t to hold power for ourselves but to give it.
Preaching is the first line of defense and catechetical offensive against these corrosive falsehoods.
Except for the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1521 were the most important of his writings.