Authors
1. What kind of being is God? He is the God of love.
St. Paul said, "Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:39)
Even Jesus Christ would be nothing without God's love. This is why we value God's love above everything. God's love is the source of life, the source of happiness, and the source of peace. (24-325, 1969.09.14)
What is God's love?
2. God's love is stronger than the sun. When the sun rises in the morning, the shoots of all plants turn toward it. Yet God's love, and it alone, is the source of life, the source of our original mind, and the source of the ideal. (099-232, 1978.09.25)
3. The coming Lord possesses God's original true love and His real truth. Through this truth, families emerge, and true societies, nations, and the world emerge. On each of these levels – individual, family, tribe, people, nation, and world – love, ideas, and personality emerge.
It all begins with the individual. In this way, a person who lives a true life as an individual, in whatever corner of the world he or she may be, is living for the sake of the whole world.
That is how it is in the world of love. Living in the world of heart for even one hour would be our source of pride for a thousand years, and living in that world for one day would give us pride for ten thousand years. It is true love that allows us to experience the precious value of life. True love lets us feel even the energy by which our cells multiply.
The world filled with God's love is like that. It is hard to describe in words, but it is a world of enchantment where all our cells are dancing and we feel as if we are flying on the clouds on a bright spring day. (20-026, 1968.03.31)
4. How shall we describe God's love? It is like being enraptured by a warm spring day with white clouds floating gently in the sky. The air shimmers above the ground, insects crawl around, and ants scurry about, exploring the world.
Beside a flowing stream, pussy willows bloom, frogs sing songs of spring, and bees and butterflies flit about. It feels as if you are drifting off to sleep, but you aren't sleeping. You are awake and in a happy mood, rejoicing in the beauty around you. God's love has such a flavor that lasts forever.
Our mood as we focus on becoming the ideal object partner for whom God is seeking is like our mood in that flower garden with the fluttering butterflies and buzzing bees. (37-029, 1970.12.22)
5. The place where God dwells is filled with love. It is a place where the more you give, the more you want to give, and the more you receive, the more you want to return millions of times more than you receive.
This is the kingdom of heaven. Because you can give more and receive more there, you feel an explosive stimulation, as if all your cells are bursting. God's love is like that. (039-335, 1971.01.16)
6. What defines a good person? It is the attitude that good and precious things belong to the whole, rather than to him or her alone, and it is the heart to connect the value of such things to the value of the whole.
God, who created heaven and earth, is a being of utmost goodness, the root of all things, and the subject partner of love. When there is someone whom God can truly trust and love and to whom He can entrust things, He will want to hand over everything He values to that person.
If this is so, the desire to give one's most precious things to others is the principle of heavenly law and the original heart of all people. (13-247, 1964.04.12)
7. God's love encompasses parents' love, the love between husband and wife, and children's love. Of course, it includes siblings' love as well, and when that expands, it also contains love for the nation and the world. So we say that God's love is parental love, conjugal love, and filial love.
This is the most wonderful statement that can be made. Because the power of love can guide everything, it affects one's destiny. If we understood love and its power to determine what happens in our lives, we would be able to change our destiny. (067-172, 1973.06.03)
8. The love God needs is absolute. Just as God needs absolute love, unique love, unchanging love, and eternal love, we also need absolute, unique, unchanging, and eternal love. In this respect, we resemble God.
Since God has both a masculine and feminine nature as well as plus and minus qualities, He created human beings, His substantial object partners, as men and women.
Thus when people marry, they become the substantial plus and minus representing God. God seeks to bring perfect unity between His vertical love and horizontal love through marriage; this is God's Will. (279-246, 1996.09.15)
9. When giving us love, how much would God want to give? God does not limit His love, saying, "Okay, okay, that's enough." God wants to love without limit. Even after giving everything, God will still say, "Because of who you are, I want to live deeper inside you."
That impulse is in the original nature of love. Once having entered into a relationship of love, God would be happy to live even as a servant. A father feels joy even when he sees his beloved infant son or daughter climbing onto his dining table.
Love transcends the law. After giving all His love to people until now, can God say, "I have given everything to you. Why have you given nothing back?" The God of absolute love still has the attitude that He has not been able to give all the love He wants to give. God cannot assert Himself.
It is a principle of creation that God wanted to give humankind complete love, and for that reason, because He still has not been able to give us that complete love, He wants to give us something more. Because God is like that, the more we think of Him, the better we feel. (36-077, 1970.11.15)
10. God says, "I am love." This means He likes love by night and by day while working, resting, dancing, or crying. This is why He said, "I have love, in all its fullness." The phrase, "in all its fullness," indicates that everything is contained therein.
The one who likes love most is God. Since God has such love, if we come to know and taste His love, we will not let go of God even at the cost of our life.
(44-188, 1971.05.07)
11. To receive God's vertical love, an original, unfallen couple has to stand in loving oneness, the man on the right and the woman on the left, perpendicular to God's vertical love, ablaze in love and unity.
When that happens, they engraft God as one man and one woman. How are they engrafted? There must be a balance. What does this entail for the individual? Start with the understanding that God is the bone of love.
Concerning love, God's love is like the bone and human love is like the flesh. The bones and the flesh become one and assume a form, like the human body. God's love is bone love and True Parent's love is flesh love. (181-206, 1988.10.03)
Eternal and absolute true love
12. "Do you have eternal love in your heart? Have you arrived at the position where you can say, "God's love has come to me. It will never change. Though heaven and earth may change, this promise does not change"? That's where you have to be. God's love appears in places that do not change.
God's love is unchanging, so we can say it is eternal. Because it is unchanging love, if it comes to you, it comes on the foundation of your having also developed an unchanging heart. Therefore throughout your life, everything you eat, you should eat for that love; you should sleep for that love; everything you do should be only for that love.
If you have a perfect, unchanging standard for the sake of love, God's love will appear. If that doesn't happen, all the promises of the universe are proven false. (83-180, 1976.02.08)"
13. God is in the position of the Father for all humankind. Because He is the Father, He is the center for all His children. Even though God created humankind, since He is in the position of their Parent, He also naturally exists for their sake.
Parents want to exist for the sake of their children. Day and night they worry about their children's safety. Parents try to protect them from trouble and harm. The way of goodness is to seek and connect to the original nature of such a parent; that is the way of love.
Goodness brings the connection of love in the parent-child relationship and enables us to realize our purpose. That is why we have to base goodness on love, and not just any love, but God's love, which is at the center. If we do not do so, we cannot establish the center of love on earth. (057-085, 1972.05.29)
14. Until now, God has loved those people, tribes, and nations that were dear to Him. He blessed the Israelites as individuals, as a people, and as a nation, adding blessings again and again, with the concern that they might reject His blessing if they thought it too small.
Even this was not enough. He wanted to bless them further by sending His beloved Son. When they rejected that blessing, He even gave them the life of His Son. Even after His only Son died as he did, God still wanted to give more love.
This is why, on the day when this love is finally returned, all of heaven and earth will be transformed into the ideal kingdom of heaven. (38-167, 1971.01.03)
15. Where do God and human beings connect? They connect where their life, love, and ideals intersect. This is nothing other than the parent-child relationship. How great would our joy be if we could be equal to God?
God is the subject partner of our love, life, and ideals. If this is so, do we still need to pray? God's authority and dignity are not the issue. Without hesitation, we can hold on to God. When we experience God embracing us, caressing us, and loving us, it melts our very bones. (69-079, 1973.10.20)
16. What happens when you experience God's love? Your hair will dance and so will all your cells.
When you become completely intoxicated in this love, you don't faint; you want to live forever. If someone tries to wake you, you plead not to be awakened. As the saying goes, "A saint's delight makes him forget the passage of time." There is indeed a way to become enraptured by this level of love, which exists far beyond human imagination. (59-317, 1972.07.30)
17. Why do all people like God and follow Him? It is because God is the One who gives everything to them, then continues giving more, continues giving everything for thousands of years, and still feels it is not enough. He says, "Now I can give you only this much, but wait a bit longer, and I will give you something that is many hundreds of times, many thousands of times better."
This is because He has so much in His heart that He is never satisfied with what He has given today. Far from it; He promises to give better things in the future. If we were with that kind of God, we would be happy even if we were poor and had no food to eat. Such a reality would be no problem because we would be stimulated by hope.
It would be like receiving a jolt. That kind of situation is all the better because it leads to a new resolution. Being together like that, our tears, shed for the future, would be mutually comforting.
We would not despair over the present reality but would be filled with hope for tomorrow. Encouraging each other face to face, we would express our mutual resolve. It would be an intense experience. (36-291, 1970.12.13)
18. It is not so much Adam and Eve's bodies that God likes as their love for each other. God wants to be in the place where the two unite. The final destination of the purpose of creation that God seeks is the place where He can meet His children and love them.
The final destination we wish to reach is where we can attend to God as our Father and receive His love as His children. This is why human beings strive to become the children of God and God strives to make us His children.
The place where these two desires coincide is none other than in the parent-child relationship. There is no place higher than this. (56-145, 1972.05.14)
19. God does not need knowledge, as He is the creator of knowledge. God does not need power, as He is almighty. God does not need money, as He can make diamonds and gold whenever He wants.
There is only one thing that God needs: love. You may ask, "Can't God have as much love as He likes?"
But God cannot have love by Himself. No matter how impressive a Ph.D. you have, no matter how overwhelming your power as a ruler of the world, and no matter how awesome your wealth as a mighty king, you cannot possess love by yourself.
What God needs most is a partner with whom He can share true love.
(137-053, 1985.12.18)
God, the origin of true love
20. In terms of love, God is the origin of all the related emotions. It is from here that parents' love, husband-wife love, children's love, brotherly love, the love of relatives, and the love of a people emerge.
Just as the branches, twigs, and leaves spread out from a tree trunk, and as ripples flow out from waves, the shoots of love grow out; the farther they go, the more sensitive you become.
If you become a person who receives God's love, the one among your relatives whose heart is closest to God will be attracted to you. If God is with you, people are attracted to you, although they don't know why. (050-267, 1971.11.08)
21. We should become sons and daughters who are concerned about the heart of our Father and attend Him. Otherwise, so we will become objects of pity. Once we know that God exists, that He seeks us and works for us, we must understand that it is not enough to see this God as merely a mental image.
God is the substantial being who wants to be with us eternally as one body, eating together, living together, sharing joy and suffering together for eternity. God is the eternally unchanging original being of love, the embodiment of eternal hope.
Jesus Christ was the person who made no excuses in front of this God. Completely forgetting himself, he was able to do anything for the sake of God's Will. We must be sons and daughters who can follow in Jesus' footsteps. (4-082, 1958.03.09)
22. Whenever we see something big, we want to make it our own. In our hearts, there is nothing we cannot own. Our heart is vast enough to want to bring God to us and attend Him, and vast enough to bring any country that follows God to us, and to bring the world to us.
Therefore, attending to God in our hearts is not a problem; our hearts are that big. We want to attend God in our hearts. Since God is a loving God and an Absolute Being, we cannot put this being of absolute value anywhere else. People want to go together, be together, and live together with the person they love.
How do we want to live together with our beloved? We want to go deeply into one another and become one. This is the original nature of love. (56-149, 1972.05.14)
23. A man must be able to say, "I am the subject partner of perfect love representing men." A woman must be able to say, "I am the subject partner of perfect love representing women, so you and I need each other." What a man needs on earth, other than God, is a woman.
Also, other than God, what a woman needs is a man. Why is this so? It is so they can receive God's love. To do this, the man and woman both must stand in the position of true perfection, where even if they could turn back they would not want to, and even if they had a chance to stop loving they would not want to.
This is the meaning of attending God. The owner of love is neither man nor woman, but God. (149-100, 1986.11.17)
24. Where can we dig to find God's love? God's love does not originate where brothers and sisters love each other. God's love does not originate with man and woman's love at the center. God's love originates in the love between parent and child. There has to be a vertical relationship.
Such a relationship is established only through parents' love, so the parent-child relationship is the foundation for love. In this love, there is no distance. In this vertical relationship, there must be a center.
There is only one center. The center must be the best place. Wherever there are two centers in this world, the struggle begins. (28-169, 1970.01.11)
25. If, with true love, you seek a person better than yourself, you must invest 100 percent, then 1,000 percent, and then invest again. When you think you have invested enough, at that moment, everything stops.
When God created human beings, He wanted to make His object partners of love greater than Himself, so He invested every ounce of His being. He invested and wanted to invest even more, to make His intangible nature completely substantial.
Only when you have invested everything and forgotten about your investment can you find the beginning of true love. It is that simple. This is a fundamental principle of the universe. (203-232, 1990.06.26)
Creation is the investment of true love
26. Even though God is the Absolute Being and the subject of true love in the eternal, unchanging, and unique realm, He doesn't ask others to live for Him. Working from nothing, God invested Himself to bring everything into being. His investment was for His creation. He had to invest Himself.
Through this investment,t the universe came into being. The origin, foundation, and starting point was true love for the sake of the world. Everything began from true love. This was the original point, the beginning of the ideal.
(173-255, 1988.02.21)
27. God invested Himself totally in making all things of creation. He found love only when the object partner into which He had invested was complete. In the same way, the more we invest ourselves for the sake of the public sphere, the more love will come to us. So we must be devoted children in our families.
Why do we need to be dutiful toward our parents and loving toward our brothers and sisters? The more we are, the more love will come to us. Then, what do we want to own? We don't want to own knowledge, power, or glory. We want to own love. That's the highest purpose for which human beings were created. It is the destination we seek. (109-270, 1980.11.02)
28. A mother offers her body for her child and then forgets her investment. No mother remembers how she gave and shared her flesh and blood. While she is nursing her baby, a mother does not keep a record in a notebook, writing, "Today I gave the baby this many milliliters of milk."
She invests and forgets, invests and forgets. The way a mother raises her child is the same way God created all things, by investing and forgetting, investing and forgetting; the two are the same. (235-101, 1992.08.29)
29. The origin of creation reveals the logic of love for the sake of others. It is great to invest for the sake of an object partner. This is where the life philosophy of "living for the sake of others" originates.
Love should take us on a voyage to the ideal. The life philosophy of living for the sake of others originated to keep us moving in the direction of the world of purpose.
Unless one takes the path of total investment, one cannot reach the destination of true love. This is possible only when you invest yourself totally and live completely for the sake of others. (173-213, 1988.02.18)
30. True love is love for the sake of others. Giving, or living, for the sake of others means searching for the object partner, the second creation, who is the object of love. Not only God creates; we too are creating now.
Just as God invested Himself completely into His creation, likewise true love invests completely. When you invest yourself completely, your creation appears for you. (167-123, 1987.07.01)
31. True love is not about being served but about serving others. When God created His object partner of love in the beginning, He invested all of His energy, all of Himself, 100 percent.
In this way, God set the example of true love. In other words, God set the tradition of true love by exhausting Himself completely.
This true love is the center of the cosmos. (201-205, 1990.04.09)
32. The way of true love is not to have others live for one's own sake; it is to live for the sake of others. When God created His object partner of love, He did so for the sake of His object partner, repeatedly investing all He had.
This God is the original central being. The original central being with this kind of heart is the God who made all creation. True love for the sake of others is giving 100 percent, then 1,000 percent; it is giving everything, thus turning oneself into a vacuum. (201-349, 1990.04.30)
33. Love is total investment. A man looking for love needs to invest everything. He has to invest his five senses completely, his eyes, ears, nose, mouth and sense of touch. Unless he fits with the perfect shape of the model according to the original form of creation, he does not qualify to attain his love.
Resembling God, he must invest everything. (173-213, 1988.02.18)
34. God began His creation based on love. He did not do so to suffer a loss. People often think that to give of oneself is to lose, so why did God invest everything? It is because love has the power to fill everything to overflowing and remain undiminished.
So God invested everything and used Himself up, but He received love in return. When you invest in true love more and more, it does not gradually diminish. The more you invest, and the more you exchange, the more it expands.
If it were a principle that true love grows smaller through investment, God would have been depleted. But instead, the more He invests in true love, the bigger it gets. The world of true love grows bigger as it moves. If you want to capture love, you need to invest and forget and invest and forget. (237-126, 1992.11.13)
35. God created all things of creation with the heart to invest Himself for the sake of His object partner, His partner of love. So if you love all things of creation as God did while creating them, when He invested Himself and enjoyed everything with a heart of love, you will stand on God's side.
The more you love the things of creation, the closer to God you will be. (61-207, 1972.08.31)
36. The origin of the universal principle is God. To create the universe, God invested Himself completely in everything He made. Throughout history, He has sacrificed Himself ceaselessly to save fallen human beings.
The prophets, saints, and sages who knew God's Will and followed His Principles with their lives were not satisfied to merely keep the truth to themselves. They sacrificed themselves for the sake of teaching the truth to others.
(234-222, 1992.08.20)
37. Why should I sacrifice myself, having to overcome difficulties, with a sense of responsibility for others? It is so that I can influence others. This is to stand in a position like that of God, who invested energy and created everything from nothing.
When He looked at all that He had created, "God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1).
Therefore, the things that came from that were also supposed to be good.
But we are not good until we stand in the same position as God and follow His principles of creation. (62-193, 1972.09.25)
Sun Myung Moon