1. Love: The Essence of God

World Scripture

God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1 John 4.16

My mercy embraces all things.
Qur’an 7.156

To love is to know me, My innermost nature, The truth that I am.
Bhagavad-Gita 18.55 (Hinduism)

The Great Compassionate Heart is the essence of Buddhahood.
Gandavyuha Sutra (Buddhism)

Lord! You are the uninvoked savior, motiveless compassionate being, a well-wisher even when unprayed, a friend even when unrelated.
Vitaragastava 13.1 (Jainism)

Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart. Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes lives in the Self. He is the source of love and may be known through love but not through thought. He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!
Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.1 (Hinduism)

Love is the firstborn, loftier than the gods, the Fathers and men. You, O Love, are the eldest of all, altogether mighty. To you we pay homage! Greater than the breadth of earth and heaven, or of waters and Fire, You, O Love, are the eldest of all, altogether mighty. To you we pay homage!… In many a form of goodness, O Love, you show your face. Grant that these forms may penetrate within our hearts. Send elsewhere all malice!
Atharva Veda 9.2.19-20, 25 (Hinduism)

O good man! Compassion acts as parent to all beings. The parent is compassion. Know that compassion is the Tathagata. O good man! Compassion is the Buddha Nature of all beings. Such a Buddha Nature is long overshadowed by illusion. That is why beings cannot see. The Buddha Nature is Compassion. Compassion is the Tathagata.²⁵
Mahaparinirvana Sutra 259 (Buddhism)

The Bull of Dharma is born of compassion;²⁶ Content of mind holds creation together. Whoever understands this is enlightened; How great is the load under which this Bull stands!
Japuji 16, M.1, p. 3 (Sikhism)

O Son of Man! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image, and revealed to thee My beauty.
Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic 3 (Baha’i Faith)

Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

God is the Lord of love. He exists to spread love throughout the universe and make it eternal.
(298:304, January 17, 1999)

God is the Womb of love. He is the Source of love’s emotion, out of which emanates parental love, children’s love, sibling love, love of kin and love of country. These different kinds of love are like branches and leaves growing from the main trunk. They are like waves that eventually turn into ripples. The further away from the Source, the fainter the emotion becomes.
(50:267, November 8, 1971)

How does it feel to experience the realm of God’s love? It is like walking through a garden on a warm spring day. You see all different kinds of flowers and become intoxicated with all their fragrances. Lying on the grass, you feel something indescribable as you look up at the sky and see the towering cumulus clouds shaped like clumps of cotton. You feel your cells dancing, breathing. God’s love is the wellspring of power and happiness for all beings; it endows each one with the energy of life. God’s love is the absolute requirement for faith. It is the necessary element for joy, pleasure, peace, and everything else human life desires. Moreover, God’s love is the principle of the spirit world.
(24:325, September 14, 1969)

What is God’s heart? It refers to God’s perfect foundation for love. All of God’s creations welled up from His heart, as did all His ideals for them. Thus, God’s heart is the perfect foundation for everything. God’s heart also springs forth into the perfect completion of everything. There can be no perfection or completion apart from God’s heart.
(82:292, February 1, 1976)

God is the Subject of heart. For this reason, God can feel limitless sorrow as well as limitless joy. Just because He is God doesn’t mean that He possesses only joy and positive emotions. When God is sad, His heart of sorrow is deeper and wider than any person can ever comprehend.
(11:89, February 12, 1961)

God exists for love and lives for love. God does not live for Himself, but for love. Likewise, all things are born from love. Thus, in the world of love, there cannot be a concept that we should live for ourselves.
(303:287, September 9, 1999)

God knows everything. Omniscient and omnipotent, He is the Supreme King of knowledge and power. Omnipresent, He exists everywhere. What does God need? Diamonds? He can make them any time. Gold or jewels? No. What God needs is love. Dwelling all by Himself, would God say, “I have love and it’s great” and laugh? No, there is something that God needs. God is a personal God; then He should have a mouth, shouldn’t He? He also should have a nose, eyes, ears, hands and feet, a mind—and a heart. Surely, God must have them, because He is a personal God.
(142:30)

God is the Original Being of love, and out of love He created human beings. A solitary being cannot love. Therefore, there is one thing that even God absolutely needs: a partner whom He can love. He can only love in a relationship with a counterpart. God, the Original Being of love and heart, created the universe with love as His motivation.
In doing so, He created human beings in His image as His substantial object partners, as it is recorded in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” God is our eternal, formless and internal Parent, and [he created] Adam and Eve to be perfected as our visible and external parents.
(135:10-11, August 20, 1985)

If what God needs is love, then He needs object partners with whom He can relate and share love. What sort of beings could these be? Animals? God would love beings that resemble Him. If God’s partners are indeed human beings, then we are led to the conclusion that God has a human-like personality. God, who is in complete harmony within Himself, must also have attributes that can harmonize one hundred percent with the innate faculties of the human mind and body. Hence, God must have intellect, emotion and will.
(162:271, April 17, 1987)

Love cannot be completed without a partner. Even God absolutely needs a counterpart in order to attain the most precious love; that is why He created. God seeks out a partner, so that He can experience absolute love through relating with another. In this sense, God exists for human beings and human beings exist for God. True love begins when we live for the sake of another.
What is the origin of human beings? God’s love. We were born for love. Love is the origin. Life is not the most precious thing. Our life derived from God’s idea of love; therefore, love precedes life. Love is the root of life. We are born from love, grow up in love, and meet a partner for love—that should be our life.
If God is the first generation, then human beings are the second generation. God always loves us, His sons and daughters, but do we experience God’s love? Human beings need to experience that love if we are to become God’s perfect partners.
(143:310, March 21, 1986)