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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Luther actually expected the Catechism to be taught in the home.
Attempting to escape the errors of medieval Catholic thinking, Agricola ended up making the same mistake of conflating law and gospel.
Charles V, for all his power, his lands, and his riches, was ultimately unable to hinder the spread of the precious Gospel.
This is an excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Let the Bird Fly: Life in a World Given Back to Us written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
This is an excerpt from Martin Luther’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), edited by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2018).
In that moment of greatest despair, we find the antidote for all our fears. We know we are beloved of God and there is salvation in Christ’s atoning death.
Chains may have restricted Paul, but nothing can restrict the gospel.
It was meant to be Karlstadt’s moment to shine, but all anyone remembered was Luther.
As Luther said, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf of spring.”
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
Church historians attempt to determine why Melanchthon made those controversial decisions.