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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God’s love does not have an off switch. You cannot earn it or deserve it. And your thankfulness for it will not determine if you get it or not.
Where there’s more sin, there’s more grace! Are you comfortable with that? That the greater the sin, the greater the grace? Could it be that easy?
If you get out your red-letter bible and just read the red letters, as I did today, you're in for a shock. When you read just his words, Jesus seems harsh and pretty ticked off most of the time!
Love continues to gently but endlessly pursue the narrator, despite his persistence in pulling away in the opposite direction.
Unlike human marriage, which is marred by sin, Jesus never seeks to divorce us due to irreconcilable differences.
Whoever your president is, you have a King. A King who elected you.
This is an excerpt from “Unveiling Mercy: 365 Daily Devotions Based on Insights from Old Testament Hebrew” written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2020). Used with permission.
This earth is not the place where your promise is to be found. Rejoice because the kingdom of God comes to you!
It’s easy to slip into thinking about forgiveness solely in terms of our authority over it.
How we define holiness will affect our approach to God.
Understanding that I am completely free in Christ allows me to read the injunction to “love my neighbor as myself” as a promise instead of a threat.
The only reason we're aware of our old self is in baptism, God created a new self for us.