The church here on earth is an alternative, counter-cultural community. . . . God’s people live out of a particular antithesis to the values of the fallen world, and they do so as the “soul” of the world, transforming life to envision God’s redemption accomplished in the divine embrace when God the Son, by the power of the Spirit, stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross and won back the world to the Father. — Robert Webber, The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), 238.