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.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.

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Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
This is an excerpt from Chad Bird’s book, Your God is Too Glorious, 2nd Edition
God sees true beauty
God gives good gifts to underserving workers. God gives good gifts to all of them.
Of all the Inklings, Williams was certainly the most enigmatic. His mind and body were always moving.
This week, we’ll take a closer look at what it means to have a God who remembers us. Today, 1517 Scholar in Residence Chad Bird first introduces the Old Testament meaning behind the word and the Hebrew way of remembering.
Faith sees your neighbor not as a means to an end, not as a way to score points, but as an object of love: Christ's love and yours.
The issue is not the existence of so-called inner rings, but our desire and willingness to spend our lives in order to gain from an inner ring what is freely promised in Christ: hope, security, and identity.
This is an excerpt from Faith in the Face of Tyranny: An Examination of the Bethel Confession Proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer & Hermann Sasse in August 1933, written by Torbjörn Johansson and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2023).
This is an excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Let the Bird Fly: Life in a World Given Back to Us written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
This is an excerpt from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), edited by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2018).
This is an edited excerpt from the conclusion of The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics, edited by John Bombaro and Adam Francisco. (1517 Publishing, 2016).