The God of True Love
1 God is omniscient and omnipotent. He can obtain everything He desires and do everything He wishes. It seems ideal, and that there is nothing God could need. Nonetheless, there is still one thing that He needs: love. Even though He is absolute, even God cannot have love by Himself. This is because love can be had only in a mutual relationship. No matter how all-knowing and all-powerful God is, He cannot possess love on His own. Of course He has love's attributes, but love's signals and love's stimulation can come only from another person, not from within oneself. Such is love. That is the power of love. (138-246, 1986.01.24)
2 For what purpose did God create us? He created us and established the standard for our perfection based on love. Hence, love is the standard. In other words, becoming a perfect person is based on God's love, not on our ability or level of leadership. Once we become a perfect person centering on God's love, we can unite with God in love, play with Him and enjoy everything together with Him forever. The perfect person, the one who meets the highest standard of God's desire, is the person who is one with God in love. (138-246, 1986.01.24)
God governs by His love 3 True love began from God. Love started from Him, is sustained by Him, and has to return to Him in the end. God is the King of kings. Since God is absolute, His love is eternal. Therefore, if you stand in the position of object partner to that absolute love, you are bound to have eternal life. This is what God intended from the very beginning of creation. It is for this reason that we want to live eternally. It is natural that we have such hope. (224-127, 1991.11.24)
4 You can realize true love only through a mutual base with another person. But true love is not only about husband and wife. Your husband-wife relationship has to be centered on God's ideal of creation. The absolute Owner of true love is God. When you desire to unite with your partner in true love, the true love of the absolute God will abide with you. Thus a true couple moves toward the future world with one hope, cherishing God's true love. Upon this foundation true children can be born, and the family will enjoy prosperity. Our ultimate hope is to transcend the sphere of a couple's life through true love, and form a family in harmony with God's ideal of true love. (294-066, 1998.06.11)
5 If there were no God, living on earth would be no fun. What do you want to see with your eyes? You want to see good things. When you go to a movie, you want to see a good movie, not a bad one. You want it to move you and inspire you. You also want to hear good things; you do not want to hear bad things. Among all good sounds, you want to hear the best. People want to see, hear, smell and touch the best of everything. What is the best thing of all? It is love. Then who is the owner of love? Who is the King of kings of love? It is God, who created heaven and earth. (037-021, 1970.12.22)
6 The omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God, the King of wisdom, uses His power to transform the worst things in the human world into the best things. While doing this, God inevitably finds Himself making absolute demands on people based on love, as appears most fitting to Him. But being such a boss, what should God do? In that position, it seems as if God sometimes uses His power to make things as He likes. But even if He does so, He is making these demands out of love, because He takes this position not for Himself but for others. For this reason, those who live for themselves have nothing to do with God. To have a relationship of love with God, you cannot live for yourself. If you do so, you move far away from God. But if you live for others rather than for yourself, you too may sometimes have to act like a boss. Nevertheless, if you do so for the sake of others, you absolutely will become the owner of love. That is God. Therefore, we can say that in essence, God is the One whose existence as the absolutely unique being is based on love and caring for others. (175-155, 1988.04.16)
7 God is a loving ruler. He is a loving ruler who eternally lives for the sake of others. He is such a God. Therefore, if you want to have a relationship with Him, stay together with Him and enjoy His reign in the realm of love, you too have to assert yourself through a life of loving and caring for others. Otherwise, you are neglecting your relationship with God. (175-157, 1988.04.16)
8 Even the absolute God wants to obey true love absolutely. This view is not to be found in Christian theology. In the history of Christian civilization, people seeking after power caused much bloodshed. They believed that everything could be achieved through power. They also believed that God could do whatever He pleased, but this is wrong. Even the God of absolute power is looking for a place where love can settle, a place where love can be secured. God absolutely adores love. How much does He adore it? He adores it more than He likes exercising His absolute power, more than He likes being omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. What does this mean? For the sake of love, God absolutely obeys love, even if He has to abandon everything else. Only then does it all make sense. We say God is the Father of all humankind, don't we? If He is, could He, as the Father, tell His sons and daughters that they must absolutely obey the law of love if He did not live in obedience to it Himself? It is an indispensable root principle that God can teach His children to live in absolute obedience to love only because He Himself does so. He can affirm that they should live that way because He Himself is doing so. (207-261, 1990.11.11)
9 If you ask what is true, I would answer, “absolute love.” Even the absolute God must absolutely obey true love. When a man and a woman love each other so much that they cannot live without each other, they can each go beyond their own life. Each can sacrifice his or her life for the sake of the beloved. To become one with their beloved, they are willing to sacrifice everything, the past, the present and the future. If this is true of love even in this fallen world, how much stronger is perfect love, the love God wanted, in the original world? Life is not the issue. God can deny even His own life for true love. That is the power of true love. If God could do whatever He pleased with love, the world of peace could not come about. By the arbitrary use of His power He could bring about one unified world, but without harmonious giving and receiving between people who love and care for one another, it would not be a world of peace and unity. (289-274, 1998.02.01) |