Tag: sons and daughters of God

Can We Say “Father, Thy Sorrow is My Sorrow”

John 20

20 On Sunday morning while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 2 She ran to Simon Peter and to Jesus’ favorite disciple and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb! We don’t know where they have put him.”

Psalm 68

28 Our God, show your strength!
    Show us once again.
29 Then kings will bring gifts
    to your temple
    in Jerusalem.[e]

30 Punish that animal
    that lives in the swamp!
Punish that nation
    whose leaders and people
    are like wild bulls.
Make them come crawling
    with gifts of silver.
    Scatter those nations
    that enjoy making war.
31 Force the Egyptians to bring
    gifts of bronze;
    make the Ethiopians hurry
    to offer presents.

World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon

Chapter 3

The Purpose of Human Life

Sons and Daughters of God

2. Recovering the Dignity of Sons and Daughters of God

Sons have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
Isaiah 1.2

The Rock, his work is perfect;
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and right is he.
They have dealt corruptly with him,
they are no longer his children because of their
blemish;
they are a perverse and crooked generation.
Do you thus requite the l ord ,
you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your Father, who created you,
who made you and established you?
Deuteronomy 32.4-6

We are all as the Buddha’s sons. The Buddha
has always declared that we are his sons. But
because of the three sufferings, in the midst
of births-and-deaths we have borne all kinds
of torments, being deluded and ignorant and
enjoying our attachment to trifles. Today the
World-honored One has caused us to ponder
over and remove the dirt of all diverting discus-
sions of inferior things. In these we have hith-
erto been diligent to make progress and have
got, as it were, a day’s pay for our effort to reach
Nirvana. Obtaining this, we greatly rejoiced and
were contented… but still we did not perceive
that we are really Buddha’s sons.
Lotus Sutra 4 (Buddhism)

For since in prayer we call God our Father, it is
our duty always to deport and demean ourselves
as godly children, that He may not receive
shame, but honor and praise from us.
Martin Luther, The Large Catechism (Christianity)

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The original relationship between God and human beings is that of eternal Parent and child. Restoration, therefore, means recovering that relationship. (316:236, February 13, 2000)

Since God is the King of faith, He seeks a prince of faith, and since He is the King of love, He looks for a prince of love. (Way of God’s Will 2.2)

In relating to God, we should follow the way of children of filial piety. God is serious about the world situation. Is there someone who, with even greater seriousness, is desperate to experience God’s heart, and who forgets himself and spends sleepless nights in the struggle to become God’s child? This is what the question comes down to. (62:35, September 10, 1972)

God is your Father and you are your Father’s daughters. How much God has longed to embrace His daughters in His bosom? For that reason, you should become God’s filial daughters… If each of you becomes a filial daughter, all your family members will follow suit. By the same token, the entire nation, world and cosmos will unite with you. You will become God’s number one victorious daughter, a saint to the world, a holy daughter to the cosmos. That is how you become a mistress in the realm of the royal family. (293:208, May 26, 1998)

Mayest we become Thy simple and pure children who can penetrate to Thy heart of longing and love which desires to embrace us… Father! Although we called Thee “Father,” our voice did not flow out of a sincere mind and heart springing forth from our flesh and bones. There was never a time when we could rush to Thee and cling to Thee out of such an emotion. (20:199, June 9, 1968)

Only after climbing over hills of sorrow,
hills of suffering and hills of resentment…
can we hold on to Thy heart and say:
“Father, Thy sorrow is my sorrow,
thy suffering is my suffering, and Thy troubles are my troubles.
Please entrust all Thy suffering to me,
while Thou dost dwell in joy.” (4:294, September 14, 1958)

The Relationship Between God the Father and Child Is the Basis of the Universe

Cheon Seong Gyeong 291

You don’t know how rigid religious
dogmatists can be. Syria belongs to the
Islamic cultural sphere. I brought an elite
group of leaders from Syria to East Gar-
den and we shared the Divine Principle
with them. Our Unification Church is
not a branch of Christianity but its main
trunk. Because Jesus brought salvation
by being sacrificed in the role of the son,
Jesus himself must have parents, and
because Jesus did not have a son of his
own, his authority as a parent must be
restored. For this reason the term “True
Parents” is so wonderful.
Established Christian churches are
making a big fuss because I said that
Jesus is my disciple, but they will see
everything when they go to the spirit
world. Why do I say such things, when I
know clearly that doing so will cause me
to be inundated with curses?
How about the established Christian
churches? Through Unification Church
members, I will clean up anything that
is unclean in their back rooms and
hold worship services transcending all
denominations. After this, I will go to
the spirit world. I will go there after com-
pleting that trans-denominational wor-
ship. You may not know this, but there
are already a large number of ministers
using our Principle. Some of them read
the Divine Principle on a blanket and
when a deacon or elder comes in, they
quickly hide it underneath the blanket,
and then take it out again when they
leave, and read it all night. They memo-
rize it and diligently use it.
Autumn leaves do not fall all at once.
Do they fall all at once? They do not.
They fall one by one, rather than as a
whole bunch. Although they fall one by
one, before long the tree, once clothed
with green, is left with no leaves. Wheth-
er they know it or not, I am dealing with
things in that way. (213-34, 1991.1.13)

Cheong Seong Gyeong 1186

Since the vertical and horizontal
indemnity, the indemnity of the eight
stages was completed, last year, on August
31, 1989, I went to Alaska, the northern-
most place in the western world, and
conducted the “Ceremony of the Settle-
ment of the Eight Stages.” It was con-
ducted at the northernmost place. Then
on September 1, I announced the “ideol-
ogy centered on the Heavenly Father.” It
is the ideology of salvation through love,
which we know as the parent-centered
ideology. This ideology urges us to love
everyone. Satan cannot oppose love. If
Satan does not oppose the Unification
Church on its way, it will spread world-
wide in a flash. (199-157, 1990.2.16)

World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon

Chapter 3

The Purpose of Human Life

Sons and Daughters of God

  1. Our Birthright as God’s Sons and Daughters

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

We are told that God is the God of love. We humans seek the supreme position where the God of love can truly love us. When we can occupy that position, God, from His position, cannot but love us. It is the place where the human heart and the divine Heart are united as one. It can only be attained when we are relating with God in a parent-child relationship.
I am not referring to the relationship we have with our own father and mother who gave us birth and raised us. I am speaking about the original relationship, between the absolute God who created the cosmos and human beings had they not fallen. It is the ultimate relationship human beings can have with God: God is our Father and we are truly His sons and daughters. God intends that we attain this incredible position. (53:286, March 4, 1972)

Once I entered a mystic state and asked God in prayer, “What is the basis of the universe?” God answered, “It is the relationship between father and child.” This does not mean our relationship with the parents who gave us birth, but to the relationship between God and human beings.
What is the exact content of this relationship? There is nothing closer, nothing deeper, than when the Father and His child are one: one in love, one in life, and one in ideals. In that unity, God’s love is my love, God’s life is my life, and God’s ideal is my ideal. This is the first and original fatherchild relationship, where unification occurs. (69:78, October 20, 1973)

After creating Adam and Eve, God showered true love upon them. Who initiated true love? It was not Adam and Eve. It was God, loving them as His children. It is like a newborn baby who dwells in the warmth of its parents’ love; however, it is ignorant of love and thinks that its parents exist for it alone. It knows nothing of its parents’ other concerns. God’s parental love encompasses everything, yet we first come into an awareness of God’s love just as babies come into an awareness of their parents’ love. They smile to see their parents and are grateful for their protection. This is how the love of the Parent and His children grows. (149:312, December 21, 1986)

God created human beings out of His absolute love, to be His partners in love. This relationship forms an axis of love, linking God the Father with human beings as His sons and daughters.
Is there anything higher or more precious than to be a son or daughter of God? If anything were higher, then surely human desire would aspire to attain it. But there is nothing higher. Do you think that when the omniscient and omnipotent God created Adam and Eve, He secretly reserved the highest position for Himself and made Adam and Eve to be only second best? We cannot imagine that God would do that to His children, to His partners who share absolute love with Him. As our eternal True Parent, God invested Himself one hundred percent into the creation of human beings and endowed us with the right to have equal status with Him, to participate in His work as equals, to live with Him, and to inherit from Him. God bestowed upon human beings all of His attributes. (September 12, 2005)

God is the Father of human beings, and we are His children. Then suppose someone said to God, “Your child is more handsome than you.” Would God be happy to hear that remark, or would it make Him feel bad? If He were to feel bad, then God would be beneath the level of humans. Of course, He would be happy. That is the logic of love. (40:343, February 11, 1971)

The horizontal love between a husband and a wife blossoms with God’s ideal love, and the fragrance of their love oscillates throughout the universe even as God’s love is added on to their love: This is the truth of the relationship of the Father with His children at its perfection. (101:34-35, October 28, 1978)