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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Jesus has instituted his living-breathing disciples, his shepherds in his church, to declare the full forgiveness of sins.
To obtain this righteousness, you have to admit you don’t have it and could never produce it on your own because you are unrighteous.
When joined with a good Reformation theology of vocation and the freedom of a Christian, Fujimura’s vision for culture care is something all Christians can embrace, regardless of whether they are artists in the formal sense.
What the gospel does is take people who were enemies of God and transform them into lovers of God
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
This is a companion article to “Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well”
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
Some part of us always wants our ability under the law to be just as important (or more) than grace.
Paul knew that, without the resurrection, the Christian life was a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.