The hands keep moving, trying to wash away invisible bloodstains. Lady Macbeth’s repeated gesture in Shakespeare’s Macbeth reminds us that recognizing sin and being freed from it are not the same thing. Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, likewise confronts the anguish of a heart that desires good yet does evil in his sermon on Romans 7. Yet Paul’s confession does not remain trapped in despair over himself. It moves toward thanksgiving to Jesus Christ, who delivers him.
Romans 7:7–25 illuminates an inner dimension of faith that is difficult to explain to others. A heart that loves the Word and a day spent falling short of that Word coexist within the same person. The gap hurts not because we do not know what is good, but because we desire the good and yet fail to carry it out fully. Without concealing this contradiction, the passage refuses to let sin and helplessness have the final word in our confession. It traces the path a heart awakened to sin must take, extending that path into the life a forgiven person is called to lead.
When the Light of the Law Reveals What Lies Hidden in the Heart
Paul asks whether the law is sin and immediately rejects the idea. God’s commandment is holy, righteous, and good. The problem lies in the cunning of sin, which exploits that good Word to deceive people and lead them into death. The fact that the law makes sin visible does not make the Word that reveals it the cause of sin.
The commandment “You shall not covet” brings this distinction into focus. Not having taken what belongs to someone else does not, by itself, make the desires of the heart pure. The law does not stop at what the hands have done. It also illuminates what the heart grasped for before the hands ever moved. Amid comparison and consumption, the heart that has endlessly sought to possess more finally hears its own name before the Word: covetousness.
In Genesis 3, which the sermon also revisits, God’s prohibition was not a command intended to harm humanity. The serpent twisted a command meant for protection, stirring up the desire to become like God. When we distrust God’s love, his prohibition sounds like deprivation. When we trust that love, we receive it as a boundary that safeguards life. What we must cast aside to find freedom, then, is not the Word, but sin’s deception that distorts the Word into oppression.
Understanding the purpose of a prohibition, however, does not instantly quiet every desire. Where sin is exposed, conflict may instead become even clearer. The law tells me what I must relinquish, but that knowledge alone cannot deliver me. Here we begin to see why we must hold together the Word that reveals sin and the gospel that saves sinners.
A Faith in Anguish Still Longs for the Good
Pastor David Jang reads Paul’s lament as the struggle of sanctification that continues even in the lives of believers who have been saved. The inner self delights in God’s law, yet old habits and sinful inclinations remain in the flesh. When the desire to do good clashes with actions one does not wish to perform, a person can become a stranger to oneself. The more sincere the confession of faith, the more painful that dissonance may feel.
When Paul speaks of sin dwelling within him, the sermon distinguishes between the identity of the person who has been saved and the power of sin at work within that person. To have committed sin does not mean we should conclude that we ourselves have been utterly forsaken. At the same time, we cannot evade responsibility by claiming that it was merely the sin within us that acted. The purpose of this distinction is not to defend ourselves, but to identify clearly the sin we must forsake and to hold fast to the way back to the Lord.
The sermon finds a longing for holiness within this anguish. A heart troubled by sin has, at the very least, not accepted that sin as a normal way of life. Yet being distressed does not, in itself, bring about transformation. Our longing for the good must lead to prayers of confession and concrete acts of obedience. We must also learn the humility of seeking the Holy Spirit’s help.
Distinguishing justification from sanctification helps us understand where we stand. Justification—God’s declaration that we are righteous—is a gift of grace. Sanctification is the journey of learning holiness within that grace, following the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance. Having already been forgiven does not make obedience unnecessary, and remaining weak does not erase the hope of beginning again. Faith walks between these truths, neither pretending that we are perfect nor allowing our failures to define the whole of who we are.
Repentance Moves Beyond Self-Reproach Toward Grace
Confronted with sin, the heart can seek refuge in different forms of concealment. We may rationalize our wrongdoing by saying that, since we have received grace, it does not matter. Or we may hide our inner lives to appear flawless believers. One path abandons the commandments; the other abandons honesty. Both leave sin untouched. Repentance means turning away from both paths and laying before God a truthful account of what we have done.
The sermon compares the law to a mirror and the gospel to the washing away of dirt. Putting away the mirror only prevents us from seeing the stain on our face; it does not make the stain disappear. Nor does staring into the mirror make us clean. When we do not speak of sin, the cross fades into a vague source of comfort. When we speak only of sin, the sinner becomes trapped in condemnation. At the very place where the law exposes my sin, the gospel leads me to Christ, who washes me clean.
Repentance, then, is not the same as tormenting ourselves for longer. We must acknowledge what we have coveted and where we have refused to obey, but that acknowledgment must lead to prayer seeking Christ’s forgiveness. Meditating on Scripture becomes not a tool for discovering other people’s faults, but a time of remaining before the Word that illuminates our desires. Prayer becomes not a time for disguising sin in pious language, but a time to acknowledge that we cannot overcome it in our own strength and to seek the Holy Spirit’s help.
This transformation calls for daily practice and patience. Meditating on the Word, confessing sin, seeking forgiveness, and impressing the grace of the gospel upon our hearts anew cannot be replaced by a single resolution. Sanctification is a long race, so we must not stop moving forward simply because visible change is slow. Rather than merely trying to persevere by trusting our renewed resolutions, we must remember each day the Lord’s grace that enables us to overcome sin. Today’s obedience is not a contribution of merit toward our salvation, but a lived response to the love already bestowed upon us.
The community that walks this long road together must also take on a different character. The church must identify sin clearly while offering opportunities to turn back, grieving together and helping people find restoration. Gatherings for prayer and the sharing of the Word should not provide a pretext for concealing sin. They should encourage people to forsake it. Those who know their own anguish cannot easily assume a position of superiority in the face of another person’s failure. When the seriousness of admonition grounded in the Word is joined with love that helps others rise again, even a confession made in shame becomes a reason to pray together.
Thanksgiving Begins Before the Battle Ends
After crying, “What a wretched man I am!” Paul gives thanks. Rather than declaring that his will has grown stronger, he thanks God through Jesus Christ. The focus has shifted from himself to the One who delivers him. For those still battling the evil they do not wish to do, the foundation of thanksgiving lies in the cross of Christ.
Pastor David Jang’s sermon distinguishes this thanksgiving from positive self-suggestion intended to brighten one’s outlook. Its foundation is the gospel: through his atoning death, Christ has redeemed us from slavery to sin. We must hold together the experience of sin’s continuing power to tempt us and the truth that sin is no longer the believer’s ultimate master. Today’s weakness cannot undo the redemption Christ has accomplished.
This assurance does not excuse us from the battle; it gives us strength not to abandon it. Those who trust grace neither take sin lightly nor make their failures grounds for endless despair. As the reasons for displaying our own righteousness diminish, the reasons for living in obedience as forgiven people become clearer. Thanksgiving is not a declaration that the struggle with sin is over, but a confession of trust in Christ, who delivers me even in the midst of that struggle.
The passage leads us to look toward the freedom and joy of Romans 8 without turning away from the anguish of Romans 7. It is a path on which the reality of the “not yet” does not cause us to forget the salvation already bestowed, and the grace already received does not lead us to neglect the struggle that remains. Along this path, thanksgiving grows together with the humility to acknowledge sin. The more honestly we see our sin, the more deeply we seek forgiveness. The more deeply we know that forgiveness, the more willingly we obey the Word.
Even today, our hearts may love the Word and yet feel ashamed before it. What we need then is neither a mask to conceal our wrongdoing nor a final verdict to pronounce upon ourselves. We need to acknowledge our sin, look to the cross, and take another step of obedience with the Holy Spirit’s help. Today, without hiding this anguish, what thanksgiving can I offer through Christ?
Dr. David Jang has proclaimed the gospel in various regions of the world through field missions and digital media ministry, and as the fruit of that ministry, many people devoted to the Great Commission have been raised up. Based on this missionary vision, Olivet first began as a small church school for missionary training. Later, in order to provide more systematic theological education and cultivate missionary leaders, Olivet Theological College and Seminary was established in Los Angeles and Seoul in 2000.
As the school grew, Dr. Jang officially founded Olivet University in San Francisco in 2004. In the diverse and dynamic environment of San Francisco, Olivet expanded its educational fields beyond theology to include music, journalism, art and design, and technology. The university also strengthened its educational capacity by recruiting faculty members, including Dr. William Wagner, and in 2005 moved to the former UC Berkeley Downtown Extension campus, further solidifying its foundation as a university.
In 2006, Dr. Jang transferred the presidency to Dr. David James Randolph in order to focus more fully on missionary work, while continuing to lead global missions as International President. Olivet University later received institutional accreditation in 2009, added a language education college and a business college, and continued to grow as a Christian educational institution for world missions by expanding its degree programs and international partnerships.
