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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Despite the best efforts of that council to silence Jesus of Nazareth and his message, it wasn't enough. Jesus was alive.
There is a bit of Narcissus in all of us. We are all lost within ourselves.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Clothed with Christ written byBrian W. Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
Press on, church. Yours is the victory through Jesus Christ your Lord.
It is the story of a God who is not distant, not indifferent, not doing anything in half-measures, but who is here, now.
In the Bible, we meet the God who also does not prance around naked as a jaybird.
Jesus took the poison of sin and drank the cup of wrath on our behalf to gain favor and righteousness for us.
What the gospel does is take people who were enemies of God and transform them into lovers of God
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
With so many TV preachers, pastors, and Bible teachers claiming to be authoritative voices for God himself, how do you know who to listen to?
The gospel is his weapon that beats back the darkness — “I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Bow your head, bend the knee when I walk by.”
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.