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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God graciously bursts our foolish plots by coming our way, into our very flesh, and being God with us.
Those clinging to God in Christ can be assured that it’s all clean.
Whether one believes Jesus to be God or not, His words and actions proclaim that He did not come to be served but to serve.
Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
I once heard an old, retired Lutheran professor give in interview on a podcast. He was asked by the interviewer why people should bother going to church if they could just be saved through a personal relationship with Jesus?
Music is an inherent part of our humanity as image-bearers of God. And like all gifts, it is meant for the good of the receiver.
We are continuing our summer series on a theology of worship through the lens of language. Before moving forward, let me highlight a few points by way of review.
Like any language, the liturgy has syntax—a structure that provides order and intelligibly communicates meaning through all that is said.
Over the next few months, I invite you to join me in looking at what the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the subject of worship through the lens of language.
During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.
People lamented that ancient paganism was dead, but the same people who profess that they would love an old pagan feast ignore Christmas, where the best of paganism has survived.
Ultimately, however, I fell in love with traditions—and specifically, traditional worship—for a single, overarching reason: its components, to varying degrees, are all in the service of the Gospel.