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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Our brokenness cuts deeper than just the times when we recognize it needs to be fixed.
God does not combat the impending armies of Satan with might and power, but with the weakness of a babe.
The Son of Eve disarmed Satan’s hold on humanity, not with an earthquake, atomic bomb, or brilliant essay, but with his dead body and final words, “It is finished.”
I can only disbelieve you or believe you. If I disbelieve you, I go on being a miserable bore.
We are still so much closer to Peter in our flaws than his virtues, and Christ is still our rescue.
If someone confesses their sins into my ears, I have no options but to forgive them in the name of Christ.
Here is truly illustrated the truth that no one comes to Christ except the Father draw him; and with what power, what delicious sweetness, the Father allures!
When we ask ourselves, "My God, how did I get so lost," he answers, "I am the God who comes to seek and save the lost in the power of my resurrection.
Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?
“I forgive you,” must be said and it must be said often in a marriage.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
It is in the midst of a world marked by empty and deceptive hopes that have broken hearts and lives that we are sent to deliver the promise of a future that has as its last chapter the resurrection of the body to eternal life with the Lamb who was slain but is alive forevermore.