1 John 4
4 Dear friends, don’t believe everyone who claims to have the Spirit of God. Test them all to find out if they really do come from God. Many false prophets have already gone out into the world, 2 and you can know which ones come from God. His Spirit says that Jesus Christ had a truly human body. 3 But when someone doesn’t say this about Jesus, you know that person has a spirit that doesn’t come from God and is the enemy of Christ. You knew that this enemy was coming into the world and now is already here.
4 Children, you belong to God, and you have defeated these enemies. God’s Spirit[a] is in you and is more powerful than the one that is in the world. 5 These enemies belong to this world, and the world listens to them, because they speak its language. 6 We belong to God, and everyone who knows God will listen to us. But the people who don’t know God won’t listen to us. That is how we can tell the Spirit that speaks the truth from the one that tells lies.
Isaiah 51
You are in trouble and drunk,
but not from wine.
So pay close attention
22 to the Lord your God,
who defends you and says,
“I have taken from your hands
the cup filled with my anger
that made you drunk.
You will never be forced
to drink it again.
23 Instead I will give it
to your brutal enemies,
who treated you like dirt
and walked all over you.”
The Incarnation of Jesus, A Pioneer
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 1, 1959
What are God’s tactics? To reclaim one person, God must suffer a blow as hard as that person’s worth. This is the way Heaven works. To reclaim one family, Heaven must receive a blow as hard as that family’s worth. This is how that family can be reclaimed. Accordingly, to reclaim a people and raise them, God has to suffer the same amount as their worth. Jesus learned through his daily life that this is the tactic of God.
Because Jesus had to represent God, to claim a people, He had to become a sacrifice on the level of the individual, the family, the religious group, and the people. By receiving a blow, he pioneered the path of sacrifice.
Jesus came to live this way of life. Though he sought a comrade among the prepared Jewish sects, there was not even one person who welcomed him. Even in Korea today, fishermen are poor and lowly people and not well respected. You can imagine how Jesus must have felt when he had to seek out ignorant fishermen 2,000 years ago. Do you think that a person like Peter would become inspired and follow Jesus immediately after just hearing his words a few times? Although that is the way it is written in the Bible, the Bible does not elaborate upon the daily affairs in the background. You have to understand that people like Peter heard some rumors about Jesus that helped them believe in him.
Rejected by the people, Jesus came as a laborer and as a friend of the fishermen. He shared his life, heart and desires with them. He fought on with the determination that he would help satisfy their hearts’ desires, even at the cost of his life. The reason such fishermen as Peter could follow him was because Jesus testified and fought with this kind of heart and mind-set.
What did Jesus do for three years after picking these uneducated disciples? In the same way that God had served and toiled for 4,000 years to raise the Israelites, Jesus chose them and served them.
Jesus had great hopes for the twelve disciples he had chosen. It was Jesus Heaven had sent to influence Judaism and govern all priests and officials. His ideology was grand, his hopes were great, and his heartistic level was high. The priests and officials of that time who did not recognize Jesus, the pioneer with God’s practical ideology, were more pitiful than Adam and Eve immediately after their fall.
What did Jesus do while looking at these people? You have to understand that through the three years of his ministry, Jesus passed through the same course as God, who had walked the path of sacrifice and service for the sake of raising the people.
Therefore, Jesus searched for disciples, forgetting food and drink even when he had somehow obtained them. When he had something to wear, he gave it to his disciples, disregarding his rags. If there was some comfortable place to sleep, he let his disciples sleep there and sat in an uncomfortable place. Jesus, who lived in oneness with God and with this kind of heart and mind-set, should have brought victorious achievements through his three-year course of ministry. Yet such results did not come.