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 took the poison of sin and drank the cup of wrath on our behalf to gain favor and righteousness for us.
What the gospel does is take people who were enemies of God and transform them into lovers of God
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
This is an excerpt from Romans 14 in Romans: A Devotional Commentary by Bo Giertz, translated by Bror Erickson. (1517 Publishing 2018), pgs 79-80.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Moltmann is gone now, but his theology will continue to provoke and provide.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.
The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
The profound significance of Christ’s resurrection comes from the threefold justification it provides: it justifies the sinner, the sinner’s hope, and God himself.
The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.