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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Epiphany celebrates that we have not been left in our hearts’ cold darkness and this spoiled creation.
This year, I’m more excited for Epiphany than I am for Christmas.
What more could God do to prove to us that he is for us and not against us than to give his own Son into this fallen world to take the cross in our place, exchanging his righteousness for our many sins.
The church does well to remind the world that God is unmasked, indeed, that God has unmasked himself in the person of Jesus.
John has been preaching a radical vision of God, where God holds people accountable for their sin and calls them to repent. What will Jesus do?
In Scripture, to be "in Christ" is nothing but living in the light and reality of one’s baptism.
Christ has come to make all things new, and water and the Spirit are used for His new creation just as it was for the original.
Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
Any good work we perform among you; any doctrine we write upon your heart – that is God’s own work.
The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
To the extent that God is exclusive by offering salvation only through Christ we can say he is more gracious than other systems because he takes on our guilt upon himself while gifting us his righteousness.
Christmas-time is the bold proclamation that God was born to save sinners.