In Jin Moon
September 18, 2011
Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? You guys have to forgive my voice. I'm recovering from a cold, so please bear with me. But – good morning to all of you. I bring you greetings from our True Parents, who are spending a wonderful time with 172 ministers that were invited to Korea so they can get to know our True Parents in person, up close and personal. True Father and True Mother have been giving them a lot of love.
The Significance of the Number 172
The reason Father asked for the somewhat unusual number of 172 Christian ministers is because he was thinking about wanting to invite ministers from the north, from the east, from the west, and from the south of America, and he sees special significance in the number 43. Let me explain. Father sees the number 43 as representing the liberation of the course of human bondage, the liberation of the chosen people, and more generally the liberation of human beings who have been bound to the different denominational, ethnic, racial, and national barriers. These are barriers that all people need to be liberated from in order for us to reclaim our dignity as heavenly sons and daughters of God.
So, 43 from the north of America, 43 from the eastern part of America, 43 from the western part of America, and the 43 ministers from the southern part of America give us the 172 ministers. At the same time, Father is also emphasizing the providential number 43 because it also represents the 4,300 years of Korean history. Father sees Korea as the homeland, where the final culmination of the battle between communism and the free world takes place.
Korea is still a divided country. It is our True Father and our True Mother's wish to see the country unified one day in an understanding of who our True Parents are. When I first saw this command from our True Parents to have 43 ministers each sent from the north, east, west and south, adding up to 172 ministers to be invited to Korea, it struck me as interesting. I had never thought of north, east, west, south as adding up to anything in a word, but when you put together N, north, E, east, W, west, and S, south, it spells news. This is the time of the breaking news of our True Parents.
It is incredibly profound that 172 ministers representing Christianity have come together to set the foundation, to play the role of John the Baptist at this amazing time. They are in Korea to begin to awaken the world from its long slumber, to finally ring the bell and let all of humanity know that our True Parents are here with us at this time.
Building a Generation of Peace
Brothers and sisters, this is an astonishing time as our True Parents are single-handedly taking the horns of providence, guiding and leading us to the new millennium of peace, love and harmony. I find it extremely exciting to know that on this very Sunday we are welcoming 120 new members of our Generation Peace Academy to New York City.
It is so exciting for me as the senior pastor to think about getting to know these beautiful young men and women of God and doing whatever we can to help, inspire, and propel them to be members of what I call Generation of Peace, so we can rebrand our world by changing the culture. That's what it's all about, if you think about it. Our True Parents have come to teach us the Divine Principle, to teach us how to understand and inherit true love, true life, and true lineage in our lives. In essence, we can think of our lives as an opportunity to create something beautiful, to create the next generation, the new generation of peace -- young men and women who first and foremost know our Heavenly Parent to be our eternal parent.
In understanding that we belong to a common parent, we understand that we actually belong to one family of God; we realize that with God as our Heavenly Parent, we are the children of God, his and her eternal sons and daughters, with a divine purpose in life. Through the teachings of Reverend and Mrs. Moon we have been encouraged to live a life of altruism, living for the sake of others – the philosophy of thinking about others, wanting others to be better than ourselves, and wanting to raise up a humanity of incredible people who understand their value and purpose, and that we belong to one family of God.
The Generation of Peace needs to be a generation that understands the meaning of compassionate living, truly caring for others more than ourselves – not just through lip service, or because we're going to get a reward at the end of the day, but by being a compassionate Buddha-like, True Parents-like, Jesus-like people who are living and breathing for the sake of others. This is not about dying for the sake of others, but about continuing to prosper, doing well in life, and being inspired, as we continue a life of compassion.
When we think about the Generation of Peace, we want to raise up young men and women who are excellent not only internally but externally as well, so that whatever they feel called upon in terms of their passion in life – in terms of being the best doctor, teacher, nurse, minister, or whatever they feel called to do – they will try their best to be not only good professionals, but also good people.
This is what I'm thinking about when I talk about creating the Generation of Peace. The Generation of Peace is going to contribute to our humanity a whole new culture. In terms of our mission work, in terms of trying our best to live a good and compassionate life, while also being an internally and externally excellent human being, what we are doing is building a new culture of true love. We are rebranding who we are. We are rebranding what our movement is by changing the culture that permeates our lives.
The "Growing Pains" of Change
So the messiah has come, he has found his perfect bride, and he and his bride together have become the True Parents who have taught us how to be good people. They have taught us why the human Fall has caused so much suffering and misery through the centuries, who our True Parents are, and the importance of engrafting onto the heavenly lineage so that we have a chance to change our satanic lineage to the heavenly lineage and therefore become one family of God.
This is the gift of the Blessing that our True Parents have brought to us. The actual work of building God's kingdom, which Reverend Moon says has no barriers because it is based on true love, has to start from every one of us. It's going to require all of us to work together. When we think about building a new generation, we realize that if we are to build a world in which we all belong to one family of God, there has to be an understanding that we are all connected, that we all affect each other, and we need each other to build this family.
Even though I'm your senior pastor, when I want to implement a lot of ideas that might be new and different or a bit scary because they've never been done before and we're not familiar with them, there are going to be challenges to our insecurities and fears. But we need to remain firm to an understanding of who our True Parents are and that they come to help us change our culture and the world we live in, starting with ourselves. Then we have to decide to take the leap of faith in our Heavenly Parents and our True Parents, and in working together. You and I, your senior pastor, working together can create the heavenly culture that we so long for.
Yes, there are going to be growing pains as our movement grows into a movement glowing with the beautiful culture of true love. As with every growth, there is going to be a process of growing pains. We might feel a little bit uncomfortable. We might feel pushed or stretched. We might feel pain at times because we are not able to stick with things that are familiar to us. But we need to have our eyes on the vision of what we want to accomplish in life.
Despite the growing pains we will suffer together as a movement, if we can stay united and focused on our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, we are going to get there. The Bible says in I John 4:18, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear." In our True Parents, we have an example of this, a paradigm of love. We must believe; we must trust; we must follow our True Parents. And we must understand that if we can be absolutely united with our True Parents, there is no fear in love.
There are times in our growing process when everything, every cell in our body says, "Don't let go. Hang onto what you know. Hang onto the past." But the growing pains compel us forward and stretch us wider than we've ever been before. When we are united with our True Parents, sometimes we have to learn how to let go of our past, how to let go of the sinkers and burdens weighing us down. We need to let go of our past because our True Parents want to take us to someplace better. They want to help us become better people, inspired people. We need to believe in our True Parents and understand that in love there is no fear.
The Paralysis of James Joyce's Evelyn
When I was thinking about this passage in I John 4:18, I was reminded of a short story in the work called The Dubliners that the famous Irish author James Joyce wrote many years ago. The Dubliners piece is really a collection of 15 different portraits. What he wanted to do by writing this collection was to provide for the Dubliners – and for all the Irish people – a looking glass through which they could observe and study themselves.
James Joyce is well known for very obtuse and difficult-to-understand language, but in this collection of short stories he wrote in very familiar English, about everyman and everywoman. He wrote about nannies, teachers, housemaids – everybody that the Dubliners of that time might see in the course of their lives. These are average men and women. The story in particular that I thought about when I read this Bible passage is called "Evelyn."
The story is about a young woman around 19 years of age. Evelyn Hill is sitting by the window, watching what is taking place in the avenue below. She's thinking about what her life is going to be like, and the opening paragraph describes Evelyn as very much a woman who is stuck to a window, unable to move, just being an observer of life.
Through the course of the story, we realize that she very much wants to live a life that is not a repeat of her mother's life. Her mother died when Evelyn was quite young and Evelyn remembers her as a woman who suffered through a life of commonplace sacrifices, who seemed just to live life and go through the routines. But Evelyn wants something different. She wants to be a woman in charge of her own destiny.
Evelyn ends up meeting a sailor named Frank and falling in love with him. He invites her to go with him to start a new life abroad in Buenos Aires. He encourages her to leave her old life behind and make a new life that is very much different from her mother's life.
But in the course of the story we realize that this young heroine is in a battle between trying to understand her past, the life and family that she comes from, and grappling with fear of the unknown, the uncharted territory that will be the future of her life. She is stuck in a position where she has to decide: "Do I remain a fixture in the life that I've always known, a life I want to escape from, or do I take matters into my own hands, be my own agent of change, and go toward the uncharted territory of my future with this man who wants to marry me and take me to Buenos Aires?"
We learn that at a very young age Evelyn lost not only her mother but also her older brother. It's interesting that her older brother is named Ernest, meaning seriousness or having great sincerity. But we learn that the older brother died because he could no longer be himself; he took life so seriously that in a way he could never really be himself, and therefore, maybe he had to go early.
So Evelyn is left in her life with another brother named Harry. It's her responsibility to take care of an ailing father who is becoming more and more abusive. If she stays in her present situation, she's looking toward a life of abuse from a violent father who will take out his anger on this daughter. She's looking forward to a life in which she will be a teacher who is not appreciated by any of her students. She is a nanny trying to make extra income, but she's not appreciated by the children in her care. Nobody really cares about her, and she's living a life of misery, suffering, and poverty.
Frank then becomes almost a messianic figure for her, a symbol of the rescuer, somebody who's going to save her, who's going to take her out of her miserable state of being – if only she can decide to go together with him to escape the thing she fears the most, to end up like her mother.
When the story describes Evelyn's image of her mother in her dying day, we see a woman sitting by the window watching her life run out. We see very much the same visual that the beginning of the story presented of the daughter, Evelyn – a woman sitting by the window watching her life go by because she cannot get herself to be the agent of change. She cannot get herself to seize the day, carpe diem, and change her life for the better by breaking away from the bondage of everything that made her miserable.
When you look at her name, Evelyn, it's Eve and lyn. Through this short story, James Joyce was conveying to his readers, "Women of Dublin, think about your lives. Think about the conflict that you're confronted with. Think about the past, the domestic responsibilities that you've had, and then think about the promise of going someplace new, making true the dreams you've had, turning your dreams into reality." In a way James Joyce was asking his readers, "Where are you in this picture? Where are you in this line [lyn] that holds the past together with the future?"
The person who holds these two things together, who brings the past through the present into the future, the person who holds this line together is Evelyn herself. But because she cannot decide, she cannot successfully take her past into the future and transition it into a healthy, inspired, and exciting future. She is the key to her own line, linking her past to that glorious, prosperous, exciting, inspired future. But she cannot let go because she is so afraid of all the insecurities that abound when it comes to the unknown; she doesn't know what waits for her around the corner.
We may say that she has become a personification of paralysis. James Joyce was saying to his listeners, "Many of you in this society, confronted with the question of 20th century modernity, are afflicted with paralysis in that you are unable to decide, you are unable to grab the horns of your destiny and become the agent of the change that you want to see."
James Joyce
James Joyce was asking each of us to ask ourselves that difficult question, "Where am I when it comes to the line that links my past to my present and well on to a prosperous future?" We realize when we look at Evelyn that here is a form of escape, if you will. This is a sailor, somebody who's going to take her to uncharted territory through the means of the ocean, through the means of the water. The water becomes a symbol of everything that can be, of a new life that is waiting for her. But throughout the story she's afraid she's going to drown or that Frank, the messiah who is going to rescue her out of her pitiful and suffering existence, is going to be the person who drowns her.
What Evelyn doesn't realize is that in order for us to be reborn, our old self has to die; the old self must drown so that the waters can yield a new and inspired Evelyn. But she is so afraid of going through the process that she cannot let go. She would rather stick to the bondage of living hell than let go and believe.
I find it extremely profound when she is at the last moment of her decision process. The ship is leaving. Frank, her messianic savior, is saying, "Come. Come with me. Tomorrow we're going to be on the waters and we're going to be on our way to Buenos Aires." But the only thing she can do is, again, paralysis. She does not answer. She has become a fixture in her own life. She ceases to grow. She ceases to learn. She ceases to become human in a sense.
Even though Frank is asking her to come and come and come with him on this journey, she feels so comfortable in her orbit of repetition and rituals that she has become accustomed to that she cannot let go. The only thing she can do is to pray. This is an important moment because God has sent Evelyn her messiah, Frank, who is going to take her out of her miserable state. God has answered her prayers. But at the time when God is asking her to step up to the plate and be in charge of her own destiny, to make the decision to be responsible for her life and make her own future, she can't. The only thing she ends up doing is praying to God. She prays to God to tell her what her duty is.
In essence she's acquiescing to the state of helpless acceptance: "I will do what you want me to do, and I will just sit here until you tell me." Evelyn is asking God to do all the dirty work for her. Evelyn is asking God to roll out her life for her, to tell her what to do.
But God as our Heavenly Parent is waiting for an appointed time when his eternal sons and daughters decide to be agents of change and say, "God, you've given me everything that I need. Let me take the horns of my destiny. Let me make my future. Let me honor you and make you proud through the blessing that you have sent me in the form of this sailor named Frank." Evelyn could not do that.
What she ends up "breathing," in one sense – and there's a constant play of words: "She knows the air. She remembers the air" – when she visualizes or remembers her mother's last days, is that when her mother passed away there was a melancholy air of Italian music being played by a street organ. Just as she's trying to decide whether she's going to go with Frank or not, she hears that street organ again.
What she wants, what she does not want, what she remembers, and what she hopes for are all intertwined in her memory of her mother that she desperately wants to escape from, but she cannot escape if she doesn't make this decision herself.
With Frank, she would be going to Buenos Aires, which literally translates to "the good air." It's not the air that she breathes. It's not the melancholy air that reminds her of her mother's suffering life. But Frank promises Buenos Aires, the good air.
It's interesting that James Joyce spells Ayres not A-i-r-e-s, but A-y-r-e-s. When we look at that, the first thing that enters our mind, is "Why did he use Y and not the accepted spelling of Buenos Aires?" It's because he's asking us to think. He's asking, "Why would Evelyn not want to go toward the good air, the air that promises something good, the air that promises prosperity and love, the most important thing in the universe? Why is she afraid?"
James Joyce is asking the reader to think about why Evelyn has such a hard time deciding to let go, take charge of her life, and decide her fate. When I think about this character Evelyn, I realize that many times in our life of faith we also succumb to paralysis. We succumb to being indecisive. We cannot make a decision so we live our lives almost in abeyance, almost as if we are living on top of a suspension rope, with everything suspended because it's neither this nor that. We're not sure if we are going to be totally united with True Parents or not.
Some of us, in our fear of the unknown about what's going to happen to our movement and the Second Generation when our True Parents are no longer here to look up to and follow, are reduced to a state of paralysis so we cannot do the right thing, we cannot unite with our True Parents and our Heavenly Parent and work together to build the kingdom. Paralysis can leave us with a fence-sitter mentality.
But if we're going to build a brand-new culture of true love, every one of us has to decide to be the agent of change. We need to ask ourselves the difficult questions: "Who are our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents? Who am I? What am I going to believe in? How am I going to live my life?" And only in so doing, in taking charge of our decision to unite and work together with our True Parents can we build this kingdom that has a culture of true love.
The Mission Statement of Tony Hsieh
When I look around our movement and our church, I am reminded that I've read a good many books on people who have become extraordinarily wealthy. Especially, I have read life stories of amazing CEOs. One of these, for instance, is Tony Hsieh, who at age 24 sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million and went on to become the CEO of Zappos.com, one of the fastest growing merchandise businesses on the Internet.
Mr. Hsieh has done a series of interviews. One thing people have asked him over the years is, "How did you take this retail merchandising company from nothing to $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually? What is your secret formula?" When he was asked this question, his answer was very simple: "I always had a mission statement. I always had a vision for the kind of company I wanted to create."
Tony Hsieh
When asked, "What's in your mission statement?" he says, "Well, my mission statement comprises what I call the 10 core values." When asked, "Tony, what are your 10 core values?" he says, "This pretty much sums up the culture of zappos.com." And again, Tony himself understands that when you're branding a company, or you're trying to overhaul a major organization, corporation, or even, let's say, our movement, the way you brand your organization, corporation, or movement is by changing its culture.
Therefore, he realized that in order to change the culture you have to have some core values in place. So when the interviewer asked, "Please explain to me what your core values are?" he says, "First and foremost, I believe in 'wow' service." What he means by wow service is service to consumers that leaves them with feeling of "Wow, this is an incredible company." He is not satisfied with average or good enough. He wants the customer service in his company to be "Wow."
The next point he talks about is how he wants the word change to be in the mission statement. He wants to have a company that does not fear or avoid change. He wants his company to embrace and actually drive change because he is looking for innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. He encourages change in his corporation.
The third point he talks about is, "In our mission statement it is extremely important for us to have fun." I think this point is very dear to my heart because a lot of people have said, "You just want to listen to music and have fun all the time. Look at all the STF. They're smiling too much. They're having too much fun. They're bowling; they're going to Lucky Strike; they're going to movies. What are you teaching them?"
But any teacher knows that some of the greatest and most profound lessons in life are learned through having fun. If you can engender a fun and creative atmosphere in your classroom, you can count on the fact that your students are going to excel and do very well. Their retention of what they have learned and the longevity of their ability to retain what they learn will be amazing.
He says, "The third point of my mission statement or my core values is to be fun – and a little weird." I thought, "This guy is really talking to the right person here because I always thought I was weird." I always thought we were a bit weird, but here is this guy who's been one of the most successful CEOs on Wall Street saying, "You know what? One of the 10 core values is 'We have to be weird in order to be successful.'"
He goes on to talk about not only should we have fun and be a little weird, but we should be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. We should not be like one of those Clydesdales that just goes to the market and back, goes to the market and back. We should not be people who don't see the beauty of the blue sky or the beautiful people on the street. We should not just go to the market and back.
He is saying, "We have to be adventurous. We have to try something new. We have to be creative. We can't just be satisfied with how we've always done things. We have to be open-minded in that we have to learn how to let go of the feeling that we know it all, or the attitude of 'Let me teach you the truth because I know the truth.'" We need to be open to the possibility of learning something along the way by listening as well. So he's talking about the importance of adventure, creativity, and fun.
The next core value he talks about is the importance of growth and learning. "Never stop growing; never stop learning." The minute you stop growing and learning, thinking you know it all, you've pretty much killed yourself by deciding essentially that you no longer want to be a divine human being who is constantly evolving and changing to be a remarkable human being. We ourselves can be our own worst enemy if we don't grow and learn.
The next core value he talks about is the importance of having an open and honest relationship through communication. In an organization, corporation, or movement, we need to be open and honest in terms of our relationships. We've got to be willing to talk about the difficult things. We've got to be willing to address the difficulties that arise in a life of faith and not think we always have to put our prettiest foot forward. We have to be willing to get our hands dirty and work to build this ideal kingdom, this ideal world that we so long for.
He talks about the importance of a family spirit, which we may also view as a positive team type of thinking. We need to think of ourselves as a team. One team member affects another just like in a family one sibling affects another. A child affects a parent, and vice versa. We need to know that we are all connected.
And then we go on to the next core value that Tony talks about, which is the importance of doing more with less. Even if God didn't give us all the 10 ingredients we want, if God gave us seven, "By golly that's an invitation to be creative and come up with the next three ourselves and do something different, something that has never, ever been done before."
The ninth core value that Tony talks about is the importance of being passionate and determined in your work or your life. We need to be passionate people, not somebody who's suffering from a state of paralysis, unable to make decisions and unable to be our own agent of change. We need to be passionate and determined.
And the most important, and the last of his 10 core values, is "to be humble." No matter how good you are, don't just kiss the people on your way up. Kiss the people whom you're leaving behind because sooner or later life is a series of sine curves. If you're only kissing up, sooner or later one of the people that you spat on is going to be your boss. Then that person will remember you. So you've got to treat people well on the front and the back. Be humble.
This is his goal. These are the 10 core values that make up the mission statement for his company, Zappos.com. But when you really think about it, everything that he talks about is very consistent with all the things that our True Parents and we, too, want our Generation of Peace to be.
P.E.A.C.E. in a Culture of True Love
I say Generation of Peace. If you take the word peace as an acronym, it stands for different things. P stands for eternal parent, our Heavenly Parent, one family under God. That's like trying to understand our movement with the family spirit and positive team attitude that Tony talks about.
The letter E: I understand it to represent eternal sons and daughters, that we are eternal divine creations of Heavenly Father. If we're eternal and divine, God created every one of us as a unique, special handiwork of God. God made us fun and weird. He wants us to be happy in loving life. He wants us to showcase something that's divinely ours. Every human being is unique. Every human being is different, and that's why when we come together it becomes a beautiful tapestry.
Everything that Tony talks about resonates with our own vision: When we think of ourselves as eternal sons and daughters, we become fun; we become that weird person whom he believes is a necessary component of a profitable and a prosperous company; and we realize that as eternal sons and daughters of God we have infinite potential.
When we see the letter A, I understand it to mean living a life of altruism, living for the sake of others. In Tony's philosophy, it's living the "wow" service. It's living the kind of a life where you're serving others so they respond to you with, "Wow." We saw this when our STF'ers went out into the world and met different people – like when Emmanuel met up with that TV program. People said, "Wow, where does a young man like Emmanuel come from? Wow." He comes from a family that believes in one family under God, and that lives and applies the teachings taught by Rev. and Mrs. Moon.
When we think of the words compassion [C], or to live a life of compassion, we soon conclude that in order to be a compassionate person we have to be humble. We have to be willing to think about others before ourselves. Instead of thinking, "I'm so great, listen to me," we have to be humble, to care, and to go out of our way to raise people up to be better.
When we think about the last letter of Peace, E, to me it means excellence. The way I understand excellence is internal excellence as well as external excellence. That just calls in what Tony has been harping on about the importance of growth and learning, of doing more with less – being efficient with what we have been given – and of embracing and driving change, not being afraid of it.
The thing I tell myself all the time when I'm thinking about building this culture of true love is that the core values or the character of a person defines who we are as eternal sons and daughters of God, and the culture we create around us is what defines our corporation, our organization, and the movement we belong to. So if we are going to change the world, we need to create a culture that works for HSA, for our church, for the Washington Times, and for all the different organizations and programs that we have. We need to create a culture that works for every one of us because we belong and we understand that we are in the process of building something wonderful.
When I think about the Generation of Peace, I see so clearly that right now at the time of the breaking news, this is the time when we need to let go of our past. All the different ways that we used to do things are candidates for change. Things are definitely going to change, and we need to embrace these changes as we constantly grow and learn instead of resisting these changes as we cling to our fears and insecurities, all the things that made us feel comfortable.
You know, the messiah doesn't come to make us continue to feel comfortable. The messiah comes to wake us up from our long slumber. Our True Parents come to change our way of thinking, to change the way we have branded ourselves over the years. Our True Parents come to change our culture into the culture of true love. And through the story of Evelyn, James Joyce is asking us to think about how we have to be our agent of change or we will have to suffer the fate that we buy at the cost of our own indecision.
This is not a time for indecision, when we should be paralyzed by insecurities and fear of all the unknowns. This is a time when we should be focused and united with our True Parents as the control tower in all the airports of our lives and realize that despite all the static in the air, God is the one, our True Parents are the one. We have to understand that we are building on top of the past but that past needs to grow and transform into a glorious, prosperous, and lovely future that God would like us to enjoy in our lifetime.
Lottery Winners
Brothers and sisters, we are the hand-picked lucky lottery winners in the providential history of humankind, not only to be living at this time of the breaking news, but also to be working together with our True Parents. And the great thing about our True Parents is they have always been clear, and they continue to make our future clear. We have our True Parents at the center as the focal point of our unity, and then in the future the youngest son, Dr. Hyung Jin Moon, will be and is the spiritual heir of the movement. Therefore, it is our job to unite with the desire of our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, so that desire sets our hearts on fire as we experience living at this inspired time.
And when God comes knocking, we'd better answer the door, and we'd better be proud of being his sons and daughters. So brothers and sisters, as it says in I John 4:18, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear." This is the time to let go of our fears and insecurities, to liberate ourselves from any bonds of living hell that we may have been living under. This is the time when the number 43, represented by 172 ministers signals the time of liberation, when we must overcome all kinds of barriers – denominational, racial, national, religious, and even economic barriers. This is the time to overcome it and look toward a kingdom based on the culture of true love.
Brothers and sisters, you are indeed lucky, and you are indeed blessed and anointed to be walking with our True Parents at this incredible time. Go quietly, knowing you have been blessed. Go quietly in confidence, knowing that you are our Heavenly Parent's eternal sons and daughters. So God bless, have a great week, and welcome, Generation Peace Academy.
Notes:
1 John, chapter 4
1: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2: By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
3: and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.
4: Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
5: They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them.
6: We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
7: Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.
8: He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
9: 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.
10: 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.
11: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12: No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.
14: And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.
15: Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16: So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17: In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.
18: 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.
19: We love, because he first loved us.
20: If any one 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.
21: And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.