When you read the Romans sermons of Pastor David Jang (founder of Olivet University), it can feel as though the ancient sentences Paul recorded begin to breathe again in our own era. In particular, the way David Jang opens up Romans 1:8-15 does more than provide a standard commentary. His gaze captures with precision the heart with which an apostle loved the church and the way he understood the gospel. And as you follow that interpretation, you naturally find yourself reflecting on the shape and substance of your own faith today. That is why, when we tell the story of this passage, the name "Pastor David Jang" becomes more than the name of a preacher; it becomes a key word-one that translates Paul's heartbeat into language we can actually hear.
Above all, what stands out is Paul's thanksgiving. He confesses, "your faith is proclaimed in all the world." For a man convinced he had been called as the apostle to the Gentiles, Rome would have been a "strategic, top-priority mission field," the place he most wanted to reach first with the gospel. Yet in David Jang's reading, Paul is not anxious at all. He does not complain, "Someone got to Rome before I did," nor does he show resentment. Instead, he rejoices: "The gospel has already reached the place I longed to preach-what a reason to give thanks." Here David Jang highlights the breadth of Paul's heart. Someone unknown-someone whose name has not even been preserved-had sown the seed first, and the apostle does not envy that person. He blesses them sincerely. That posture itself is already the fruit of the gospel.
As you picture this scene, Jean-François Millet's famous painting The Gleaners naturally comes to mind. After a great harvest gathered by someone else's labor, nameless women quietly pick up leftover stalks in the field. In the same way, we do not know who first carried the gospel into Rome, but the faith of that community grew quietly-and yet powerfully. David Jang, with something like the warm gaze of a painter who sees dignity where others overlook it, sends deep gratitude alongside Paul toward those who labored first, the nameless agents of mission. That gratitude becomes a finely drawn spiritual landscape, revealing how the kingdom of God often grows through people the world does not remember.
Just as Jesus taught in the parable of the mustard seed, the kingdom of God begins as something that looks insignificant to the naked eye, yet over time it becomes a great tree where birds can nest. As David Jang explains how the gospel reached Rome, he emphasizes the "expanding power" and "spreading force" that is embedded within God's Word. We know all too well how contagious sin can be. But the ability of the gospel to spread is no less strong-indeed, it runs deeper and pushes farther than sin's infection. It is like the sea: on the surface, waves and winds seem chaotic, but in the depths, massive currents move steadily in one direction. On the surface of history, everything can look like confusion and coincidence; yet beneath it, God's kingdom flows without rest toward a set direction. That is the insight David Jang gently draws out.
This perspective also recalls Michelangelo's fresco The Conversion of Saul. Saul lies in the middle of a storm of disorientation, fallen from his horse, yet the light that pierces the entire scene moves in one clear direction. What looks to human eyes like "a blocked road" has, in God's perspective, already been set within the grand current of the gospel. David Jang reminds us that we, too, have been invited into that immense story-and he quietly points out why we have reason to be thankful simply for being "called into the flow."
David Jang's description of Romans as "a letter written in prayer" is also striking. Paul says that although he has never met the Roman believers in person, he has "without ceasing" remembered them in his prayers. Following Paul's language, David Jang emphasizes that fellowship in the early church was not limited to face-to-face encounters; it was a profound solidarity-bearing one another spiritually through prayer. He calls to mind Paul's words in 1 Thessalonians: "we were torn away from you in person, not in heart," and shows a network of love that connects hearts regardless of physical distance.
At this point, Rembrandt's The Night Watch comes to mind. The figures look in different directions, yet the organization of light, the composition, and the flow of attention bind them into one living community. That is one way to visualize the early church-separated by distance, yet held together in prayer. David Jang says it is the same for us today. Even if it is not a church I planted, and even if they are not believers I personally led to Christ, the apostolic heart is wide enough to pray for cities and communities where the fire of the Holy Spirit is already burning. That wide heart, he insists, is what the true heart of an apostle looks like.
When Paul explains why his desire to go to Rome kept being "hindered," David Jang's interpretation embraces both history and theology. First, he highlights the "Jerusalem-first spirit" that lived within Paul. No matter how much Gentile churches grew, Paul never treated his "mother church"-the Jerusalem church from which he received the faith-as something light or disposable. He calls the offering gathered by the Gentile churches "a grace offering," and argues that it is right for those who have received spiritual blessings from Jerusalem to serve them materially in return. Here David Jang sees the roots of an ecumenical spirit: "one world-one world in Christ." Like a compass that must first anchor its needle precisely at the center before drawing a great circle, Paul wanted to secure the spiritual axis of Jerusalem before sketching the wide circle of world mission.
This ecumenical vision brings to mind Raphael's Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (La Disputa). Above, the Triune God; below, church fathers, theologians, and ordinary believers-diverse voices gathered into a single circle around the Eucharist. In that image, the vision of the church as one body-beyond differences of era, region, and thought-is compressed into a single scene. David Jang's Romans exposition shows a similar composition: Jerusalem and the Gentile churches, those who received the gospel earlier and those just hearing it now, apostles and unnamed believers-all woven into "one world" within one circle.
As another reason Paul wanted to go to Rome, David Jang speaks of "re-education" and "strengthening." Gentile churches faced many trials and were vulnerable to distorted teaching. Paul was not satisfied with merely "winning many converts." He revisited established churches to reinforce their faith and realign them to the core of the gospel. Recalling Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees-who would traverse sea and land to make a single convert, only to make them twice as much a child of hell-David Jang stresses how crucial "love after evangelism" truly is. In his portrait, Paul is the kind of person who takes responsibility for relationships he has formed: one who returns, holds on, and supports.
That pastoral heart can be compared to Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son. When the wandering son returns, the father does not merely confirm, "You're back." He embraces him, restores him, clothes him with a new robe, places a ring on his finger, and rebuilds his entire existence. Paul's attitude toward the churches he planted is much the same. He does not preach once and disappear; he returns to strengthen faith, to touch wounds, and to reaffirm the center of the gospel. David Jang says there is a particular beauty here: the "transformed Pharisee"-the man who once pressed people down with law now raising them up with grace.
When the passage reaches, "that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you," David Jang's explanation becomes even more delicate. The phrase "spiritual gift" can sound like some secret revelation, a new and exclusive possession. But he refuses to narrow it that way. Reading Romans 12 together with 1 Corinthians, he explains that the "spiritual gifts" include the whole range of grace the Spirit distributes within the church: experiences, testimonies, wisdom, teaching, comfort, and the language of encouragement. For that reason, Paul is not approaching the Roman church as a one-sided instructor. He says, rather, that he desires mutual encouragement-"that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith."
This structure of mutuality recalls Andrei Rublev's icon of the Trinity (often associated with the "Hospitality of Abraham"). The three persons sit in a circle, gazing toward one another, and at the center there remains an open place-as if a seat is left for someone else. It is not a hierarchical pyramid, but a round table encircled by love. The church David Jang envisions looks like this as well. It is not a system where the apostle commands from above and the laity receives passively below. It is a circular fellowship where each person shares the grace they have received, and everyone is comforted "mutually." That is why he describes the church not as vertical or triangular, but as circular. Many fundamental realities-rings, horizons, orbits-are round; and as a world created in the image of love tends toward wholeness, so the church, where love flows, recovers its circle.
In David Jang's interpretation of Paul's confession-"I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish"-the heart of the gospel stands out with unmistakable clarity. When Paul was a Pharisee, he lived by a calculation: "If I do good deeds, God must repay me." He thought he could keep the law, accumulate merit, and then demand reward from God. But after meeting the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, his entire arithmetic is overturned. Now he realizes that he is not someone who has something to receive from God, but someone who already carries a debt of love he could never repay.
David Jang reads this together with Romans 13, where Paul says, "Owe no one anything, except to love each other." Here, the "debt of love" is not a burden to avoid; it is the debt of grace we already bear, the gospel-debt we gladly carry. If our very life is a life bought with the blood of Christ, then we are already debtors of love. That is why Paul can say, "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel." David Jang explains that this is not mere external obligation, something forced upon him, but an inner inevitability that arises in someone who has awakened to the debt of love. Having received so much, he cannot endure not sharing.
When we consider this debt of love, Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son becomes meaningful again. In the contrast of light and shadow, in the father's hands that wrap around the kneeling son, we can almost see with our eyes the confession: "By the grace of God I am what I am." That son will live his whole life as one indebted to the father. Yet that debt is not humiliation-it is the foundation of his existence. The same is true for anyone who has encountered the gospel. And so Paul says he is indebted to all-whether the refined Greek, the so-called barbarian, the wise, or the foolish. Through this confession, David Jang makes clear that the gospel is not confined to a particular class or culture, but is a "universal gift" that must be delivered to every person.
Finally, when Paul says, "So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome," David Jang does not reduce "the gospel" to a doctrinal formula that can be summarized in one or two sentences. He reads it as pointing to an entire world: "a deep world of love and grace already granted within me." Paul wants to share with the Roman church the countless stories accumulated within him-stories of many churches, tears and joy, failure and restoration, and a wealth of spiritual gifts and testimonies. And at the same time, he wants to receive from the Roman believers their rich stories of faith as well.
This vision of mutual sharing applies to us today without change. Through David Jang's Romans sermons and Romans exposition, what we learn is not merely an interpretation of a passage, but a gospel-shaped posture toward one another: gratitude for the nameless who labored first, unceasing intercession for churches we have not yet met, responsibility that returns to strengthen what has already been built, a spirit of unity that binds Jerusalem and the Gentile churches into one, humility and passion that only those who recognize their debt of love can carry, and a longing for a circular church that dreams of being "mutually encouraged." This is the spiritual topography of Romans that runs through David Jang's preaching.
And each of us, too, comes to hope we can confess-like Paul, and like Pastor David Jang:
"I am a person who owes a debt of love to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish-to neighbors, nations, and all peoples. Therefore, as far as I am able, in the place granted to me, I desire to preach the gospel."
