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 faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
More certain than death or taxes and more certain than “anything else in all creation” is the fact that God loves you.
Salvation doesn’t hang in the balance of a voting booth.
The difference between God's gospel and man's could not be greater.
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.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Clothed with Christ written byBrian W. Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
As both law and gospel are proclaimed, judgment and deliverance are miraculously pronounced over the hearer.
Free speech isn't dead yet, and when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, it never will be.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.