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 loved us and gave himself up to save us. He would not abandon you to your hurt or cast you away because of the hurt you caused others.
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.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
This is a companion article to “Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well”
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
We know we are made for something great. We humans were created in God’s image and restored through Christ in his perfect image.