From Brennan Manning’s book Prophets and Lovers, pages 37-38:
The tone of the Christ of God is not always sweet and consoling. The Gospel is the Good News of gratuitous salvation, but it does not promise a picnic on a green lawn. In the man Jesus, in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. And God convulsed the whole being of Jesus in the cry, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
Christianity then comprises more than involvement in civil rights, ecology conservation, peace programs, the war on poverty; and fullness of life in the Spirit is more than finding Christ in others and serving him there. It is a summons to personal holiness, ongoing conversion and new creation through union with Christ Jesus. “When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; his old life is over; a new life has already begun” (2 Corinthians 5:17
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