When we read Romans 1:8-15, the voice of the apostle Paul feels as though it rises beyond ink on a page and becomes a living breath. As David Jang (founder of Olivet University) often emphasizes, this passage is not a mere greeting. It is the deep inner confession of a person who has become a debtor to the gospel, opening his heart toward the worldwide church. In particular, Paul's gratitude for the church in Rome, his ceaseless intercessory prayer, his longing to share spiritual gifts, and his confession that he is "a debtor" to Greeks and barbarians alike-these scenes still place sharp yet warm questions upon the hearts of Korean churches and believers today. As we meditate on these verses along the line of Pastor David Jang's expository sermons on Romans, we begin to see more and more deeply how a small church and the faith of a single person can be connected to the vast missionary current of God flowing toward the world.
Paul says that "first" he gives thanks to God. Rome was not a church he had personally planted, and before he ever arrived to preach, the gospel had already reached that city. For ordinary people, it would be easy to think, "I am the apostle to the Gentiles-surely I should have been the first to reach the imperial capital of Rome." Yet Paul reveals the opposite spirit. "Your faith is proclaimed in all the world." He rejoices from the depths of his heart and gives thanks for the labor of unknown believers-missionaries whose names were never recorded-who accomplished what he had not done. As Pastor David Jang points out in his preaching, this scene shows something even before Paul's theology: it reveals how wide and warm his "vessel" is. Only someone who does not push forward "my ministry, my merit, my achievement," but can instead rejoice in the work already unfolding and sincerely bless those who ran ahead, can be entrusted with great things in the kingdom of God.
Paul's understanding of the gospel's power to expand is also striking. The small Jesus movement that began in Jerusalem flowed through the footsteps of believers scattered by persecution-into Antioch, and then at last into Rome. We do not know all the routes or all the names involved. As Pastor David Jang has said, there is a kind of "mystery that we do not know who founded the Roman church." That mysterious power of expansion resembles Jesus' parable of the mustard seed: a "tiny seed that seems as though a breath could blow it away" is planted in a field and becomes a great tree. If we recall Millet's famous painting The Sower, it becomes easier to grasp. On a dim field, a farmer walks steadily, scattering seed handful by handful. The seed is small, and the farmer looks humble, yet within the canvas the unseen future harvest is already promised. So it is with the seed of the gospel. A short testimony we leave today in a café, a small act of love, a single sentence of prayer offered with tears-one day it may fall into the heart of someone we would never imagine, forming a community of faith that shakes a city like Rome.
Behind Paul's gratitude lies unceasing intercessory prayer for the Roman church. "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers." He did not think of the Roman church merely out of doctrinal interest. Though he had never seen them face to face and had not personally established their congregation, in Paul's prayers they appeared more often and more fervently than anyone else. Pastor David Jang explains this verse by saying, "Romans is a letter written in prayer." Indeed, when we read Romans, the sentences do not feel like a cold, systematically arranged theological dissertation. They feel like lines poured out in the midst of prayer-lines shaped by experience and tears.
This invisible network of prayer closely resembles the spiritual structure that upholds the global church today. Just as people in the Roman era said, "All roads lead to Rome," today satellite maps of the night sky reveal countless paths of light connecting the world. In Paul's time, Rome's road network bound the empire together, and along those roads the gospel ran. Today, along digital roads like the internet and SNS, we share news and prayer requests with one another. The visible roads and data cables are different, but what flows upon them is still the love of prayer-"without ceasing I mention you." If we think of the stained glass in a famous Gothic cathedral, countless fragments of colored glass are joined by lead strips to form one great window. In the same way, the church is a community in which the prayers offered by believers at the ends of the earth intertwine and overlap, forming a beautiful pattern of light.
Paul's confession that he wanted to go to Rome but was hindered also resembles our own realistic struggles. "So that by any means now at last I may succeed in coming to you by the will of God." He does not merely say, "I want to go," but asks for a good way "within the will of God." He could have boarded a ship from Corinth and headed straight to Rome, yet he first turns toward Jerusalem. In what Pastor David Jang calls a "Jerusalem-first mindset," there is a sacred sense of indebtedness to the root community from which he received the gospel. Paul's confession-that since the Jerusalem church shared spiritual things, it is right for the Gentile churches to serve them with material things-reveals not merely a fundraising effort, but an ecumenical awareness: an understanding of "one world church." Like marking the exact center point before drawing a great circle with a compass, Paul seeks to firmly establish the centripetal force of loving unity between Jerusalem and the Gentile churches before tracing the large arc of global mission.
When we think of this loving unity, Michelangelo's masterpiece The Creation of Adam comes to mind. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the fingers of the Creator God and the human Adam stretch toward one another, almost touching. The tense gap between the two figures symbolically shows the mystery of heaven and earth-and likewise the Jewish church and the Gentile church-reaching out toward one another. When Paul drew the missionary line connecting Jerusalem and Rome, Jerusalem and Spain, that line was not merely strategy and planning. It carried the outstretched hand of love seeking to form "one body, one world." Pastor David Jang's ecumenical view of the church also draws its strength from precisely this point.
Paul never neglected the work of revisiting churches he had planted, re-teaching them, and strengthening their faith. He knew well that if you evangelize a person and then abandon them, deeper confusion and distortion can follow. So he built up what had already been established and then moved forward. Jesus' rebuke to the hypocritical Pharisees-"you travel over sea and land to make a single proselyte... and you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves"-clearly shows what true pastoral care and discipleship must aim for. The gospel is not a campaign to increase numbers; it is a long journey of remolding a whole person anew within the gospel.
"I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you." The "some spiritual gift" Paul speaks of may not necessarily be, in modern terms, "a grand secret revelation." Rather, he wanted to share with the Roman church the grace he had experienced across many churches-countless stories of failure and restoration, suffering and comfort. Pastor David Jang, unfolding this passage, explains that the accumulated history of so many churches within Paul-testimonies, miracles, tears-became the spiritual gift itself. Everything he saw and heard while traveling among the Corinthian church, the Thessalonian church, the Ephesian church, and many churches of Asia, gradually transformed within his soul into "a gift that can be shared."
Let us recall Rembrandt's famous painting The Return of the Prodigal Son. The worn and exhausted younger son collapses into the father's embrace, and the father opens both hands wide to hold him. Off to the side stands the older brother with a complicated expression. In this single scene are compressed countless theological themes: the repentance of a sinner, the father's unconditional forgiveness, tension and envy between siblings, and even the foreshadowing of an eschatological feast. A deep understanding of one person's life can itself comfort and strengthen those who behold it. Paul's "spiritual gift" is similar. Doctrinal teaching matters, but the honest sharing of real life led by the Holy Spirit-how God's love changed a person and a community-becomes a gift that strengthens one another. In this sense, Pastor David Jang's preaching as well, going beyond mere textual interpretation to share his own experiences and stories of churches around the world, stands within the lineage of this Pauline gift.
Paul tells the Roman church that he desires "that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith." He is not a one-way instructor or a solitary lecturer. The authority of an apostle is real, but that authority does not press down from above; it appears as an invitation-let us learn from one another and be comforted together. Pastor David Jang's explanation that the church is, in essence, not a vertical structure but a circular one finds exact grounding in this verse. Most worldly organizations are triangular. But the world ruled by love-namely, the kingdom of God and the church-is essentially closer to a circle. Christ stands at the center, and around him brothers and sisters stand hand in hand.
If you gaze at a medieval cathedral's rose window, you can intuitively feel what that circular structure means. A pattern begins from a small central circle and spreads outward, embracing countless petal-like pieces of colored glass to form one magnificent flower-yet no piece is completely severed from the center. Light flows from the center to the edges and then returns from the edges to the center. Paul's "mutual encouragement" is exactly this mystery of circular fellowship. Even an apostle is comforted through the stories of the saints, and lay believers are built up through the apostle's proclamation of the gospel. Pastor David Jang's emphasis on "a church that learns together and weeps together" also overlaps with the imagery of this rose window.
The following confession-"I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish"-is, one could say, the very heart of Paul's theology. The "debt" here is not a mere human sense of owing a favor. Though Romans 13 says, "Owe no one anything, except to love each other," Paul suggests that the debt of love remains, by its nature, an essential obligation that can never be fully repaid. When Paul lived as a legalistic Pharisee, life was a ledger of "merit and reward." If I do good, God should repay me; I should be acknowledged as righteous. In that mindset, God might have seemed like someone who "owed" him. But after meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, his ledger is completely overturned.
Here, one work of art in art history is especially evocative: Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus. At the center of the canvas, Saul lies on the ground with arms spread wide, struck down by blinding light. The horse rears, and the attendant sits bewildered, unable to understand what has happened. This dramatic scene feels like a visual portrayal of "the moment a human being becomes indebted to God." Until then, Saul may have thought he could demand merit from God. But collapsed before the light of Christ, he realizes he is a being who holds only an unpayable debt of love. From that moment on, his entire life becomes a struggle to share and "repay," even a little, that love-debt. His proclamation that everyone-Greek or barbarian, wise or foolish-has the right to hear the gospel reveals that he was called as a universal apostle, not confined to any single people or culture.
This consciousness of love-debt is still valid for us today. Why do we evangelize? Why do we share the gospel? Pastor David Jang repeatedly reminds us, quoting 1 Corinthians 9:16: "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" Evangelism is not "earning points with God," but a voluntary response-the desire to share, even a little, the love we have already received freely. Everyone has a church that made them who they are, and someone who passed on faith to them. There was a coworker who held you up with a single phone call when your faith wavered, and an intercessor who prayed with tears for you in secret. To all those people, we are already debtors. And at the source of that love stands Christ's atonement-his life poured out on the cross. When Paul said, "I am a debtor," he was not merely speaking of human gratitude; he was confessing that his entire existence stands upon God's grace.
Finally, Paul says, "So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome." The gospel had already entered Rome. A church had already been established. And yet Paul says, "to you also I want to preach the gospel." This is not a simple declaration of re-evangelizing. Rather, it is as if he is saying: "This deep world of love and grace already within me-the mystery of the gospel that is new every time you hear it-I want to hear it again with you and share it together." The gospel is not information you hear once and finish; it is a mystery that unfolds anew throughout a lifetime. The fact that Pastor David Jang's sermons on Romans continue in a long, expository form over time also reflects this: the depth of the gospel has no end.
If we think about it, the history of the gospel always begins like a small seed. The nameless believers of the early church, the missionaries who sacrificed without recognition, the mothers who prayed quietly, the saints of small rural churches-their tears and prayers gathered to form the shape of the Korean church today. Just as each step of Millet's The Sowereventually creates a fruitful field, our small obediences and sharings also participate in the process of forming a great forest of the kingdom of God.
As we meditate on Romans, imprinting on our hearts Paul's burning love, the faith of the unnamed Roman believers, and the deep texture of the gospel that Pastor David Jang unfolds again for our time, I hope we too can confess: "I am a debtor. Therefore, as much as I am able, in the place entrusted to me, I desire to preach the gospel." And may that confession become one great line running through our entire lives-so that one day, within the salvation-story God is painting, it may shine as a beautiful part no less radiant than any historic masterpiece.
