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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What the law is powerless to do, Jesus accomplishes for us. Jesus delivers what the law demands.
We all share a common hope. The same hope that converted Augustine, drove Martin Luther out of the monastery and calls horrible sinners to new life every day.
The promise of Advent is the promise of the lamb slain, who is born and given for us so that we don’t have to fear sin, death, and hell.
While we do not have an answer, we do have a promise. A promise given to us by a God whose one and only Son was himself slaughtered by those terrified of losing their power.
God will not repent. He will not repent of His promises. He will not change His mind regarding His selfless, self-sacrificing, inconceivable love for sinners.
Abraham knew that this was a God who kept his promises.
God does not combat the impending armies of Satan with might and power, but with the weakness of a babe.
The Son of Eve disarmed Satan’s hold on humanity, not with an earthquake, atomic bomb, or brilliant essay, but with his dead body and final words, “It is finished.”
Thanksgiving is a day set aside for tragi-comic sinners to come together and give thanks for the deliciousness of God's grace in the good news of Jesus Christ.
We long for the Great Thanksgiving that hasn’t happened yet.
Any day of thanksgiving is a confessional day—a day of expressing a short creed that sums up our entire existence: God gives, we receive. Thanksgiving as a day of confession becomes very obvious when we look at it from a Hebrew perspective.
To pray that God’s name is hallowed among us is to pray for the continual proclamation of the gospel in truth and purity that we would hear the word about Christ crucified for sinners.