The sacrifice of Abel

Sun Myung Moon
September 11, 1972
God's Will and the World -- Why We Have to Go Through Hardships

Who is Abel? It is Abel who can restore God's objects of love to God by going through the way of hardships. Thus, he must subjugate Cain by the heart of love. On the horizontal level, Abel stands in the position of God. Just as God loves fallen man, Abel must have the heart of love toward Cain and restore him at the risk of his own life. The way of Abel is the way of sacrifice. In that way, God's love can be manifested on the earth. Everyone bows his head to the one who offered his life. Thus, the history of Abel became the history of shedding blood. This is the fundamental teaching of the Bible.

How miserable is God who has been standing in that position, driving the historical dispensation! The Messiah is the one who carries the responsibilities of the entire world and says to God, "Please take a rest. Give me the whole cross, the way of all indemnity." This is why Jesus could pray in the garden of Gethsemane, "Please, not as I will, but as You will." If God is suffering in the spiritual world or in the earthly world, then the Messiah has the sense of mission to shoulder all the sufferings of God. Therefore, even though the Messiah suffers he doesn't even think of it as suffering.

No matter how painful it may be, suffering lasts for your life time only. At most it would be about one hundred years. It is only a joke that you cannot conquer such a short time period. No matter how hard you work, you should feel inadequate to God. There is no study or research that justifies that you can be proud of yourself. Such is a way of faith for us, the fallen people.

As human beings who have to go along the way of recreation and restoration, we must go through that path of sacrifice. We cannot recreate ourselves by ourselves; we must go with God's help along the path of pouring out energy for the realization of the ideal self. We are standing in the position in which God must pour out His power again, so there must be sacrifice.

Since this is the original standard of the Principle, a religion which seeks the ideal world or the perfection of human beings must go the way of hardship. We must sacrifice our self-centeredness; in proportion to the degree of that sacrifice, our original nature from God is restored. As the result of the fall, we must go this way of recreation; accordingly, religious people must go through the way of hardships. This is the fundamental point of recreation.