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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This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
You have real freedom through the gospel of Jesus Christ, a freedom that doesn’t rest on founders, votes, or power plays.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
Free speech isn't dead yet, and when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, it never will be.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
He declared you what you might not always feel you are, but what you were from the moment he knew you, before you were you, when he foreknew you.
A “good death” and “good life” are not accomplished through personal striving but are grasped by faith in the promises of God.
Do our petitions move God?