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

It’s God’s love that sets us free to love in the first place.
Jesus rejects what we believe is most necessary and instead points us to his pain, suffering, death, and self-sacrifice.
The Holy Spirit does what his name implies. He makes us holy. We believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and come to him only by the Holy Spirit who calls us with the gospel.
This is an excerpt from Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2021). Available for purchase this Tuesday!
God loves you no matter what. Loves you no matter how many times you have screwed up. Loves you to death, he does.
You can’t bear your own sins, to say nothing of getting rid of them.
Good Friday encompasses the silence of God, even as it focuses on our salvation in the cross of Christ.
The true liberty that Christ gives to us through the gospel is not political. It is spiritual freedom. It is freedom from fear of God's judgment and wrath.
If sin is only a matter of “doing,” then “undoing” and/or “redoing” would serve as the equivalent savior necessary to find redemption.
Undue Protestant antipathies toward Mary have muted not only her place in redemption history and its necessary connection to Christology, but also the virtue of virginity.
Ultimately, there is only one Lord of the Universe, and he does not share power. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.