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

To “trust in God in trial” means we fight our battles by kneeling and praying to “the Holy One of Israel,” who works out our deliverance by himself.
We bring nothing with us that contributes to the preaching or the hearing of God’s promise to us.
God’s goodness spoke a promise of peace and mercy to the bewildered, a promise that rings out to this day.
This is true discipleship. We live with Jesus, we hold on to Jesus, we suffer with Jesus, because Jesus brings a divisive peace that saves.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
We are loved by our heavenly Father. When the Creator and Giver of all good things is caring for you, suddenly, you are free to care for others.
What Jesus promises is better than justice. Jesus promises grace.
Finding the balance between indifferentism and obsessiveness has never been easy, and it’s especially difficult in our environment.
Sometimes I think we should be more tempted to laugh at the gospel than we are, not in derision but in sheer surprise and awe.
The spirit indeed is willing and desires bodily death as a gentle sleep. It does not consider it to be death; it knows no such thing as death.
With Christ as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the future is secure already. It’s solid right now, even when the cords seem to be fraying.