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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Uzziah was showing the most dangerous kind of pride – a pride wrapped up under the guise of religious service.
The great lie of addiction is that suffering must be fled, must be numbed, must be drowned out by any means necessary.
This is the first installment in our Lenten series, Through the Tombs of the Kings, where Steve Kruschel explores God’s faithfulness to Judah’s kings—and to us—through life, death, and the burial of his Son.
Repentance is not limited to a season.
God is a judge, but unlike you, God is just!
In the upside-down wisdom of God, the place of the cross becomes the place of life, absolution, and triumph.
Luther’s famous treatise contains great consolation for Christians struggling with grace, suffering, and hope.
The gospel gives us faith, hope, and love, all of which proceed from Christ’s death and resurrection.
The crucified and risen Christ comes to renew, restore, and build up.
The Lord has an answer to your tears, your trouble, your weariness, your enemies, your grief, your shame, your sin.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Jesus Christ is relentless. He does not give up. And with him comes the certainty of redemption.