Taking as its point of departure Pastor David Jang’s sermon
on the Lord’s Prayer, which proclaims the God of love and the God of holiness
in an integrated and inseparable way, this interpretive essay offers a
theologically meticulous exploration of God’s transcendence and immanence, the
Trinity and the Incarnation, the essence of prayer, and the kingdom of God and
the telos of human existence. It presents an ontological and existential
account of why contemporary Christians pray and what, ultimately, they are
called to live for.
Within the landscape of contemporary Korean Christianity,
Pastor David Jang (Founder of Olivet University) is a preacher who refuses to
handle “the God of love” and “the God of holiness” as rival images of the
divine. Instead, he binds them together with striking delicacy within a single,
integrative vision of truth. In his preaching, love and holiness are not
countervailing forces that neutralize one another; they are twin axes that
mutually illumine and deepen our apprehension of God. Focusing in particular on
the Lord’s Prayer—“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom
come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”—he unfolds, with
remarkable lucidity and density, the ultimate purpose of human life, the
essence of prayer, and the eschatological horizon of the kingdom of God.
To grasp what he means by “the God of love,” one must first
reckon seriously with the category of “relationship.” Love is not reducible to
goodwill or passing affection; it is the summit of intimacy at which one person
and another finally stand face to face. The phrase in 1 Corinthians 13:12,
“Then we shall see face to face,” encapsulates the terminus toward which the
journey of faith is directed. Pastor David Jang resists confining faith to the
rote memorization of dogma or the maintenance of religious custom. Instead, he
summons believers into a relationship of “face-to-face” encounter with the
living God, into the communion of love itself. The question, “Are you close
enough to God to meet Him face to face?” becomes a probing self-interrogation
that compels us to re-examine our faith, not as a matter of outward form, but
as a matter of existence.
Yet he does not linger at the theme of love in isolation.
To understand divine love in its fullness, he insists, one must pass through a
prior and indispensable premise: holiness. At the root of almost every
distortion of the God of love lies the eclipse of holiness. The first words
Moses heard when he encountered God in the fire of the burning bush were, “Take
off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” This
command is far more than a demand for ritual decorum; it is a radical summons:
“Lay down everything by which you have defined yourself until now, every
familiar support to which you cling, and stand before Me.” For Pastor David
Jang, this is the most elemental discipline of faith—the spirituality of being
“set apart.” Through the consecration of time, the consecration of space, and
the consecration of relationships, human beings are drawn out of a
self-referential universe and learn to recognize themselves as creatures
standing before the holy God.
From this vantage point, he articulates a twofold
characterization of God. In deliberately paradoxical language, he declares that
“the God of holiness is the Almighty God,” while “the God of love is a
powerless God.” The God of holiness is the sovereign of justice who must judge
sin. He neither ignores nor trivializes the evil and injustice of the world,
but as the Almighty One, He directs history toward a final horizon of judgment
and purification. Yet the God of love, who has endowed humanity with freedom,
refuses to violate that freedom by force. He is the One who knocks and waits at
the door, who never breaks it down in coercion; He voluntarily constrains
Himself to be “the One who waits”—the “powerless God.” This formulation does
not suggest that God lacks power; it gestures toward the mystery of omnipotence
freely restrained by love. Once this perspective is internalized, long-standing
questions—“Why does God not immediately eradicate evil?” “Why do my prayers not
unfold according to my timetable?”—receive answers on an entirely different
plane.
The event in which this tension and reconciliation between
holiness and love are most dramatically disclosed is the Incarnation of Jesus
Christ. In the Old Testament, Moses is virtually the only figure who “saw” God
in any sort of visible form. In the New Testament, however, Jesus Christ
appears as “the image of the invisible God,” the concrete self-revelation of
the consubstantial God who assumes human flesh. The “suffering servant” imagery
in Isaiah 53 is profoundly unexpected: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract
us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.” When the
transcendent God descends into the human world, He does so not in the guise of
worldly power and glory, but in radical humility and self-emptying. Pastor
David Jang underscores that it is precisely through the Incarnation—the mystery
of the Word made flesh—that the love of the Father becomes perceptible in a
concrete and historical way. The eternal Logos taking on the same flesh as ours
bears witness not to an abstract deity, but to a personal God who suffers and
sheds blood within history. That the holy God Himself enters a sinful world is
already an act of love; and because this love is true, judgment upon sin
becomes unavoidable. Love and holiness therefore converge and confront one
another most intensely at the cross.
In Pastor David Jang’s homiletic vision, life in this age
and life in the age to come are not separate domains but two chapters within a
single grand narrative. This world and the next, this life and the life beyond,
truly exist; and our earthly life is likened to a brief excursion on the way
toward the eternal kingdom. Romans 1 presents an astonishingly candid analysis
of this human condition: humanity knows God, yet refuses to glorify Him as God
or give Him thanks; people exchange the Creator for created things and idols,
become enslaved to desire, and invert the order of creation, turning what is
natural into what is unnatural. God’s verdict on this condition is
“death”—eternal punishment and hell. Pastor David Jang interprets this chapter
as a divine “verdict.” He emphasizes both the gravity of the sentence
pronounced upon humankind and the striking fact that even within this judicial
pronouncement, God opens a path of salvation. The seemingly blunt slogan,
“Jesus, heaven; unbelief, hell,” is in truth the most straightforward
articulation of the eternal outcome of human existence and, at the same time, a
phrase that gestures to the breadth and urgency of the gospel.
The apostle Paul describes the hope directed toward this
eternal world using a concrete political and legal metaphor: “citizenship in
heaven.” According to Philippians 3:20, believing in Jesus Christ is not merely
the adoption of a new religion; it is the transfer of one’s very citizenship at
the level of being. Our true citizenship now resides in the heavenly kingdom,
and our earthly existence becomes that of resident aliens who already live
under the values and order of that kingdom. Pastor David Jang insists that this
heavenly citizenship is not a vague religious comfort but a concrete reality
that reconfigures identity, direction, and value structure. When this reality
is embraced, the aim of life is no longer confined to wealth and success,
pleasure and comfort. It is reoriented around two axes: “to glorify the name of
God” and “to live for His kingdom.”
This seismic shift in worldview is already embedded in the
opening address of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven.” In this single
invocation, the transcendence and intimacy of God are held together with
exquisite balance. The phrase “in heaven” proclaims that God is the absolute
sovereign who creates and sustains the universe and directs the beginning and
end of history. He is the One who raises the dead, calls into being what does
not exist, and overturns the limits of history and humanity through the
resurrection—the “God in heaven.” Yet Jesus simultaneously instructs us to call
this God “our Father.” He is not a distant, impersonal Absolute, but a Father
who does not forget even the fleeting sighs and passing desires of His
children, a God of love who remembers every thread of each person’s story with
tender precision.
From here, Pastor David Jang draws a careful distinction
between Christian prayer and more generic forms of contemplation or meditation.
Contemplation and meditation often revolve around descending into oneself,
scrutinizing one’s inner world, and remaining at the level of self-cultivation.
Christian prayer, by contrast, is dialogical from the outset—a movement toward
a personal Being outside the self, “our Father in heaven.” Prayer is not a
monologue addressed to an indifferent universe, but communion with One who
hears our words and our silences, our tears and our sighs in real time. Once we
begin from the premise that “there truly is One who receives our prayers,”
prayer can no longer be reduced to a psychological technique for self-soothing.
It becomes a concrete encounter with the living God and an act of trust that
waits for His response.
On this foundation of trust, he again underlines with
emphasis that the “God in heaven” is the Almighty God. God does not merely hear
prayer; He answers it. The difference lies in the timing and manner of His
response, which often diverge from our designs. The declaration of Isaiah
55:8—“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My
ways”—bears witness to a divine wisdom that transcends the narrow horizon of
human perception. At this point, resurrection faith plays a decisive role. Just
as the conviction that God raises the dead transformed Peter from a frightened
failure into a bold witness, so resurrection faith reshapes our understanding
of prayer. Even petitions that presently appear unanswered can be held with the
assurance that, in the God of the resurrection, they endure as seeds that will
not be lost.
The petition “Hallowed be Your name” condenses the
fundamental purpose of human existence into a single line. The divine name
revealed as Elohim, Adonai, and Yahweh is no mere appellation; it concentrates
God’s person, character, covenant, and glory. Just as a prisoner is stripped of
his name and reduced to a number, a name is the marker of identity. To hallow
God’s name, therefore, is to live in such a way that His being and glory are
manifested across the whole spectrum of our lives and His name is not dishonored.
In Romans 1:19–21, Paul identifies two duties incumbent upon humanity—to
glorify God and to give Him thanks—and exposes the fact that humanity has
refused both. He asserts that since God’s eternal power and divine nature have
been clearly perceived in creation, people are without excuse. Through this
passage, Pastor David Jang stresses that the prayer “Hallowed be Your name” is
not a pious formula but a declaration that summons an entire mode of existence
characterized by glorifying and thanking God.
When we ask whether wealth, success, and pleasure can
genuinely and finally satisfy the human heart, the cry of Ecclesiastes
1:2—“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”—sounds startlingly contemporary.
Statistics indicating that depression and inner emptiness are most acute in
places where affluence, luxury, and sophisticated urban life are concentrated
expose the insufficiency of material goods to slake the thirst of the soul.
Augustine’s confession, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts
are restless until they rest in You,” along with the psalmist’s lament in Psalm
42:1, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O
God,” precisely indicate the orientation of the human soul. The primordial
thirst of the human interior can be satisfied only by God Himself—by His
presence and His nearness. Thus the psalmic declaration, “You are my
satisfaction,” is not merely a devout phrase but a profound insight into human
ontology.
The theme of divine presence likewise occupies a central
place in Pastor David Jang’s preaching. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle
and the temple serve as spatial symbols of God’s presence; in the New Testament
era, that presence is mediated through the indwelling Holy Spirit in each
believer. Explaining the Trinity with the image of a triangle, he notes that
the Father and the Son are enthroned in heaven, while in this present age the
Holy Spirit dwells in the church and among the saints. As the hymn confesses,
“The Spirit is here—hallelujah, He is with us,” the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit
of God and the Spirit of the Lord, is the mode by which the transcendent God
becomes immanent within us. The realization that the living God is present in
me, beside me, and within my history fundamentally reconfigures both the
direction of prayer and the posture of daily life. Just as Paul recalls—and
sharply criticizes—his past of being “led astray to mute idols,” Pastor David
Jang exposes the tragic self-contradiction of claiming to know God while
effectively serving idols and Mammon.
The next line of the Lord’s Prayer—“Your kingdom come, Your
will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—articulates with clarity the second
great purpose of the Christian life. If the first purpose is to live so that
God’s name is hallowed, glorifying Him and giving Him thanks, the second is to
pray and to commit oneself to the inbreaking of God’s kingdom and the
fulfilment of His will on earth. Jesus’ beatitude, “Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6), resonates with the prophetic
vision of Amos 5:24: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a
never-failing stream.” The kingdom of God is that sphere of divine rule in
which justice and righteousness flow like abundant waters, where oppression,
distortion, injustice, and falsehood can no longer take root. Drawing on
Matthew 6:33—“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these
things will be given to you as well”—Pastor David Jang calls us to reorder our
priorities. Rather than living under the tyranny of anxiety, as though eating,
drinking, and clothing were the entirety of life, we are summoned to seek first
the kingdom and righteousness of God, trusting that He will assume
responsibility for what remains. This promise is not a moral platitude but a testimony
to the steadfast faithfulness of God woven through the fabric of history.
Ultimately, Pastor David Jang distills the purpose of life
into two sentences: “To live so that God’s name is hallowed, and to live in
consecrated devotion to the coming of God’s kingdom on this earth.” When these
two fixed points are lost, life forfeits its sense of direction and is
inevitably engulfed by futility and despair. When, however, this purpose
becomes clear, even death is no longer absolute catastrophe. For those
convinced that beyond this world there lies a greater and eternal kingdom, death
is not an end but an entrance—a moment in which one can say farewell in hope,
singing, “Go in peace; we will meet again.”
One day, all of us will stand before the threshold of
judgment. When the Lord asks, “For what did you live?” the truly blessed life
will be able to answer, “I lived so that Your name might be hallowed and Your
kingdom might come on this earth.” Pastor David Jang calls this the most
blessed, the most honest, and the most meaningful way to live. In this
sermon—where love and holiness, transcendence and presence, judgment and
salvation, this age and the age to come, personal prayer and the vision of the
kingdom of God are woven into a single organic whole—a still-pressing question
is addressed to contemporary Christians. The God of love is the God of
holiness; the holy God is the God of love. He is the Almighty One in heaven,
yet at the same time the Father who waits for us, and even now the God who,
through the Holy Spirit, is present in the very midst of our reality. And so we
are compelled to ask: “If we are able to pray, what is it that we fear so
intensely, and what is it that we worry about so deeply?” We already possess
the privilege of prayer, the privilege of knowing the loving Father, and the
privilege of living for His kingdom. The moment this truth is genuinely
grasped, faith is no longer a peripheral hobby but becomes the path along which
our entire existence walks.
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