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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He declared you what you might not always feel you are, but what you were from the moment he knew you, before you were you, when he foreknew you.
He shows up when we are at our worst to usher us back to his side, lead us to repentance, rescue us, and reclaim us as his own.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.
There is no AA for legalists. At least not officially. But there ought to be, and it should be called your local church.
We are the fruit that grows from the branch, which extends from the trunk of the tree, which is rooted in the soil that it grows out of, which is all Christ.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
At the Transfiguration, we say farewell to alleluia and hello to the horrific reality of our lost condition.
In a world—and even a church—full of distractions, thank God for Rod Rosenbladt. He pointed us to Jesus and Jesus alone.
In the Word, you find peace. It proclaims peace first between you and God because of Jesus. That empowers you to deal peacefully with others and brings you peace of mind.
When we believe in Jesus as the true and better fulfillment of every promise made to Abraham, we, too, are counted as righteous in the same way that he was — by faith.
The essence of what it means to be a son or daughter of Abraham, an inheritor of the Abrahamic promise, was irrevocably tethered to faith.
Your justification isn’t a matter of “Jesus plus” anything.