Cheon Seong Gyeong: Episode 80

Cheon Seong Gyeong Book 3: True Love
Chapter 3: The Practice of True Love
Section 2: The Practice of True love, 19-36

 

19 Sacrifice makes the way of love shine. That is why the Bible says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.  It says that it is the first commandment. As commandments go, it is indeed the first among all the commandments in the universe. It is the most important law because once we fulfill this law, we can create a realm in which all other laws will be followed. From this perspective, in order to fulfill God's Will, God's ideal of creation, we have a path to follow: we must make a relationship with God in absolute love; then we will realize the ideal of creation.

20 The way of true love is to move toward something greater, even if it means sacrificing your own interests. As you move forward toward a bigger world, you make sacrifices and accept greater hardship. With respect to the family, if your family lives for the sake of society, then leaving your family is not leaving it behind but uniting it with society. For example, when your son grows up he will find his life companion, and they will join as a couple. Even though he leaves you, his parents, his loving relationship with you can deepen, and when he has children, your family will expand. Further, when your son's family moves into society, your family grows even bigger. As its links with society develop, your family will grow ever greater.

21 If parents love their children in a self-centered way, their love is false. If children love their parents in a self-centered way, that too is false love. What do I expect to see in the Unification Church? If our church represents a true religion of true love, we should not love the Unification Church for the sake of the Unification Church. Just as you become a filial child by loving your parents at the sacrifice of yourself, and you become a true parent by loving your children at the sacrifice of yourself, in the Unification Church we should love the nation and the world even at the sacrifice of the Unification Church. This is the shortcut to establishing the law of love.

22 For us, to sacrifice our individual selves for the family is to find the path of love to the family; to sacrifice as a family in order to save the tribe is to expand the path of love to the tribe; to sacrifice as a tribe in order to save the nation is to expand the path of love to the nation; to sacrifice as a nation in order to save the world is to broaden the path of love to the world. In this way, by loving the world we should go to reach the love of God. This is the path we have to go from now on.

23 Religions teach individuals, families, tribes, and nations to sacrifice their own interests. The nation of Israel was built upon the sacrifices of its tribes. Among the nations of the world, those that stood on religious beliefs walked the way of sacrifice throughout their history. If we are to realize the ideal of creation, we must become God's object partners of love. But unless we go through sacrifice, unless we practice this essential principle of love, we cannot become one with God. Nor can we form a relationship with the ideal world of love that God is to govern. To form a relationship with the ideal world of love, there is no other way than to inherit the tradition that takes sacrifice as a cardinal principle. This is why religions place great emphasis on the path of love that requires compassion and sacrifice. The division between heaven and hell, between good and evil, is right there.

The way of blood, sweat, and tears

24 Throughout His course of searching for human beings, God has been confronting Satan. We have to learn from God's course of devotion and follow in His steps. We now know that God has devoted Himself throughout history, in ways beyond description, to finding His lost children with the heart of a parent, in the shoes of a servant, sowing sweat for Earth, tears for humankind, and blood for Heaven. We too, in order to find and attend our Heavenly Parent, must shed blood, sweat, and tears for Him, and in order to experience the heart of our Parent, we must go forward in the shoes of a servant. God suffered pain to find us, and we suffer pain to find God. The tears we shed on this course are not for ourselves alone; they are the tears we share with God. Our sweat is the sweat we share with God. Our blood and sacrifice are not for ourselves only; we shed tears and blood to participate in the sacrifices that God has been making.

25 God comes to the earth with the heart of a parent and in the shoes of a servant.  When you shed tears, He also sheds tears; when you shed sweat, He also sheds sweat. When you stand in the place of death, He sheds His blood for you. You have no idea how many tens of thousands of times God sacrificed Himself for your sake. You have no idea how many times God Himself played the role of high priest. How many painful experiences did God endure in the course of this work, from the individual level to that of the family, tribe, people, nation and world? God sent His Son to do this mission, and when he was unable to complete it, He had to do the Son's mission Himself.

26 We were dead, yet God went the way of death in order to revive us. Hence, we should go the same way—the way of blood, sweat, and tears with a parent's heart.  This course is our destiny as descendants of the Fall. When Jesus came to earth, he shed tears for humankind, blood for heaven and sweat for the earth. When Jesus went the way of the cross, he set the substantial standard of heart for the past and present simultaneously. We human beings had been unfilial children, yet Jesus made the indemnity condition in heart on our behalf when, before he died, he set the standard of forgiving us all.

27 You must connect to God in heart and experience His heart. Unless you experience His heart, you can never come before God. At the time of Jesus, what did the people of Israel do? God had shed tears, blood, and sweat for them, to prepare them as the chosen people, and All his heartfelt tears, blood and sweat still remained with them. Yet they utterly forgot all of it.

28 We are destined to go the way of one mind and one heart. How can we continue on this way without ever-changing? If we cannot go this way with wisdom, we will have to go with sweat and tears. If we cannot go with sweat and tears, we will have to go even shedding our blood. We have to offer our sweat as God's sweat and our tears as God's tears. We should shed blood for Heaven, tears for humankind and sweat for Earth. We should totally demolish the basis of God's bitter sorrow, which has blocked the union of God, the earth and human beings. This is our task. We should strive to make our daily life one in which "God's work is my work; my work is the work of the earth; my work is the work of all humankind." We should reach the point where each of us is praised as a person of divine value.

29 We who know the existence of the living God will have to save humanity before Satan inflicts more destruction on the world. Even though I might end up in the lowest position and perish there, my urgent concern is how the Unification Church can establish measures to save this country and the whole world.  We need to provide something of substance. We need substance that we can present to history, which we can present to all time and to the future. What is that substance? That substance is our blood, our sweat, and our tears. Our heartfelt blood, sweat, and tears should make God and all humankind weep. Each of you needs to shed blood, sweat, and tears. Then, when the people of the world listen to you, they will be so moved that they will not be able to hold back their tears.

30 What do you value most among all your possessions? No matter what it is, you should be able to give it away without hesitation or regret. But to me, your tears, sweat, and blood are what have greatest value. You should shed sweat for all things of creation. You should shed blood for Heaven. You should shed tears for all humankind. This is the motto of our Principle movement. You should be able to give these precious things freely. Only by doing so can you bring unity in the spirit and in the heart.

31 You should be the cement, you should be the gravel, you should be the sand and you should be the water. Your blood, sweat, and tears are the water; your flesh is the sand, and your bones are the gravel. With these materials, you must build your foundation of concrete. The foundation you create in this way will remain for a thousand years; even ten thousand years later it will still be standing. Although people may try for ten thousand years to knock it down, they will not succeed.

Loving our enemies and the way of the Principle

32 Why did Jesus teach that we should love our enemies, even as he did by carrying the cross? It is because there is no way to subjugate Satan other than by love. God-centered love is love that seeks to save the world. It seeks to reclaim the realm of love from Satan's world. God's love has a purpose: it is to liberate Satan's world. The goal of salvation is to fulfill God's Will and providence. The core element for fulfilling God's providential Will is love. We must love because it is the way to recapture this world from Satan.

33 The biblical teaching to love your enemy means to love human beings, people who are under the devil's influence. It does not mean you should love the devil himself. Our cherished hope is eternal life The only way we can have eternal life is by walking the path of true love. We create unity when we strive over and over again with our mind and body to live for the sake of others, centered on God's love. Unity comes when the body serves the mind as much as the mind serves the body. If you give and receive in that place, based on the central axis, unity will certainly come. When you stand before this axis of principled love at the point where the horizontal line and the vertical line meet, your position will be established.

34 Every human being is connected to two lineages. One is Satan's lineage; we are linked to it through the historical line of our ancestors. This happened because they had a self-centered consciousness. Then what is the other lineage, God's lineage, about? It is to live not for oneself but for the sake of the whole. This lineage lives for the sake of others. This is why arrogant people can never escape Satan's lineage.  How can you free yourself from that lineage? Worldly people live for themselves, but godly people are the opposite. They live not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the whole. That is why I tell you that the way to be free from the fallen realm is to love your enemy.

35 When you journey to find love, your mind goes first. But if your counterpart does not reciprocate, all your investment disappears. It is not so with God. His heart will keep pounding and He will keep trying again and again until He establishes His love. He just cannot stop. He continues searching unceasingly for His beloved ones. He continually strives to forge relationships with them by filling all their cells with love. He continues to invest over and over in His work of creation until He reaches His goal. This is the basic logic behind the principle of living for the sake of others.

36 To say that God created all things means that God totally invested His heart of love in them. Since God is like that, when His object partners appear, they will have the same heart. Then not only will God be able to have a relationship with people, but His love will manifest through people. Such people will prosper. You may not grasp this by reasoning it out, but nonetheless the conscience guides you to love one another and to live for the sake of others. Further, all religions teach sacrifice and living for the sake of others.