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

This post contains notes on orders of service, texts, and hymns for your midweek Lent services.
This article begins an eight-part series inspired by the Lenten themes of catechesis, prayer, and repentance found in the Lord’s Prayer as Luther taught it in his Small Catechism.
The implications were clear: Jesus’ death destroyed the things that distinguished people as educated or uneducated, rich or poor, free or enslaved, black or white, pious or godless.
The Scriptures are not a collection of platonic ideals laid out for us to strive after. Rather, they are God’s truth given to His beloved church.
Your faith is not dependent on whether or not you suffer well. Your faith is dependent on the fact that Christ did.
We can rejoice in our own need and the gift we receive through baptism given by the same one by whom John desired to be baptized.
It’s a delivery of historical facts that tells us who Jesus is and what he has done for us through his dying on the cross and his rising from the grave.
The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw" written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
Looking back on the year, the narrative we’re fed is that we should be able to show how much we’ve grown, how much we’ve done, all the successes we’ve had, how improved we are.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
At Christmas, we hear the story of our salvation, but it’s not pretty.
While we are promised that God will always be with us, we are also told of the benefits that can come to us even in our pain.