1. The Nature of True Love

World Scripture

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13

Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us… There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
1 John 4.7-12, 18-20

The infinite joy of touching the Godhead is easily attained by those who are free from the burden of evil and established within themselves. They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self. With consciousness unified through meditation, they see everything with an equal eye.

I am ever present into those who have realized Me in every creature. Seeing all life as My manifestation, they are never separated from Me. They worship Me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from Me. Wherever they may live, they abide in Me. When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.
Bhagavad-Gita 6.28-32 (Hinduism)

Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

What is a life of true love? True love is the spirit of public service. It brings the peace that is at the root of happiness. Selfish love is a mask for the desire to have one’s partner exist for one’s own sake; true love is free of that corruption. Rather, its essence is to give, to live for the sake of others and for the sake of the whole. True love gives, forgets that it has given, and continues to give without ceasing. True love gives joyfully. We find it in the joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles her baby in her arms and nurses it at her breast. True love is sacrificial love, as with a filial son who gains his greatest satisfaction in helping his parents. God created the universe out of just such love: absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, investing everything without any expectation or condition of receiving something in return. True love is the wellspring of the universe. Once a person possesses it, true love makes that person the center and the owner of the universe. True love is the root of God and a symbol of His will and power. When we are bound together in true love, we can be together forever, continually increasing in the joy of each other’s company. The attraction of true love brings all things in the universe to our feet; even God will come to dwell with us. Nothing can compare to the value of true love. It has the power to dissipate the barriers fallen human beings created, including national boundaries and the barriers of race and even religion. The main attributes of true love are that it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, so whoever practices God’s true love will live with God, share His happiness and enjoy the right to participate as an equal in His work. Therefore, a life lived for the sake of others, a life of true love, is the absolute prerequisite for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
(September 12, 2005)

First Corinthians 13 states, “faith, hope and love abide… but the greatest of these is love.” But people do not understand what love is. What does it mean to love with your whole heart and mind and soul? It means that you love even risking your life. Have you experienced loving someone completely? Have you loved your husband or your wife completely? Have your loved your teacher completely as his disciple? Have you loved your nation completely? No one, not a single person, has loved completely. Therefore, just as in a factory a single mold is used to cast thousands of parts, we need a model human being—a true person—from which to propagate true people throughout the world. That is why God promised to send the Messiah.
(Way of Unification 8.4.1)

What is true love? It is God’s love. What is the path to true love? To become the owner of true love, we must possess God and His attribute of eternity. It is as simple as that. Why? True love has the quality of eternity. Therefore, to meet the condition of [true] love, we should be eternal. We will have true love between us only when our love is eternal. Therefore, on the path to love it is obligatory that we become eternal and unchanging people. Thus, love is eternal. It is eternal, unchanging and unique. Therefore when we have that kind of eternal heart for Heaven, our path will lead us to true love, to love that is all in all.
(123:328, January 9, 1983)

What is the holiest thing in the world? It is true love. True love begins from God. God desires the path of true love above all, not any other path. God wants to see, hear, eat, and touch through true love. Were you to receive a kiss from God, you would feel such joy and happiness as if your insides were about to explode.
(Blessing and Ideal Family 1.3.8)

When God exercised His power as the Creator, He created everything centered on love. God relates to everything with true love. In the spirit world, the connection of true love makes you the leader of all things. You can create anything. Therefore, it is our aspiration to relate to everything in true love. Unless you make a connection with true love, everything you do will be in vain.
(147:116, August 31, 1986)

Ultimately, the original source of love is not in human beings, but in the first causal Being, who is absolute and unchanging. That is why a family of love is a God-centered family. Such families are the basic units for the realization of the ideal in human society. Beginning with families that realize the highest ideal of absolute love, love can expand to the nation and the world. The world of unity that is formed in families that perfect and complete love will surely expand to bring about God’s promise of an ideal world of eternal happiness.
(89:227, November 27, 1976)

Suppose a husband and wife give birth to a child with a deformity. Do they terminate its life and say, “Well, we can try again”? Is that true love? No, of course not. By the same token, a husband cannot think that if his wife displeases him, he can simply divorce her and marry someone else. Rather, he should determine to stay with her through thick and thin, always compensating for her shortcomings and her faults. That is the proper course, and such love will pass muster in the spirit world where love is more visibly dominant than it is on earth. Such a person can be called a true husband. True love is not seen when it is easy to love. True love becomes evident when you love someone even though it is difficult. The same principle of love applies in a student’s relationship to a [difficult] teacher and vice-versa. It also applies in the relationship between a nation’s president and its people.
(117:292, April 11, 1982)

If God has a creation that He cherishes and thinks most valuable, does He intend to throw it away after spending just one day, 10 years or 100 years with it? Or did He create it to be with Him eternally? Surely this applies to human beings, whom God created to live with Him eternally. We are the object partners of the absolute God, who created us out of absolute love for His good pleasure. Likewise, if a man takes pleasure in a woman for a few days, 10 years or 100 years, and then discards her, it is not love. If it were love, the more he loved her, the longer he would want to be with her. There was once a man whose wife died young. He stayed single the rest of his life, always carrying her handkerchief. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, always wore roses on his clothes because his wife had loved roses.
(39:342-43, January 16, 1971)

True love is love that continues forever. It is love that does not change, whether in spring, summer, autumn, or winter. It does not diminish when a person is a child, middle-aged, a senior citizen, or has passed on to the eternal spirit world. True love does not change.
(194:303, October 30, 1989)