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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JFK was not the only national figure who died on November 11, 1963. Though his death certainly took up most of the headlines, the acclaimed writers C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died that day as well.
So long as we entrust death to Jesus, new life is ours. He has lunch ready and he is waiting for us in the power of his resurrection.
We expect the world to shoot its wounded. But not even the world expects Christians to shoot their wounded.
The following is an excerpt from“Where Two or Three Are Gathered” edited by Scott Keith (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Forgiveness, not love, can restore a relationship that’s top-heavy with negative emotions.
By pouring out his life unto death, Jesus reverses our death.
The danger of denying the truth of our common human fallenness and brokenness by original sin is that the denial of this doctrine may also lead us to the denial of Christ as our Savior.
Every day, in everything we do and experience, we are busy hearing, seeing, and telling stories.
I had been taught and believed in a God who is love, but as I walked outside that night I did not see him. I saw the stars and I felt their indifference.
Rather than validate our selfish, self-serving choices, he justifies us by giving us new life and baptizing us into his death and resurrection.
Ultimately it’s at the cross of Calvary, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the great Lion of Judah, that the stone table is broken, and everything sad does indeed finally come untrue.
The distinction between Christ-for-you and Christ-in-you can present a misleading dichotomy.