Centering on Pastor David Jang’s sermon on Romans 8:31–34, this piece offers an organic, interconnected exposition of foreknowledge and predestination, justification and glorification, the perseverance of the saints, and Christ’s intercession—inviting deep meditation on the foundations of assurance and peace.
Romans 8:31–34 is Paul’s
most majestic proclamation of certainty—one that gathers every anxiety
surrounding a believer’s salvation and settles it with the language of the
courtroom. As Pastor David Jang (Olivet University) expounds this passage, the
point he repeatedly underscores is not a sentimental encouragement that merely
says, “Try to feel at ease,” but a theological reality: the very structure of
salvation has already been bound together on God’s side. The opening, “What
then shall we say to these things?” is not the beginning of an argument but the
announcement of a conclusion. “These things” refers to the totality of
salvation—its plan, its accomplishment, and its final completion in the history
of redemption, all initiated and carried through by God. Paul refuses to leave
salvation as a matter of chance or as an unstable record dependent upon human
resolve; instead, he binds it with God’s “golden chain,” running from
foreknowledge to predestination, calling, justification, and finally glorification.
Pastor David Jang returns to this point with persistent focus for a reason:
moments of shaken faith often arise less from the future-oriented fear—“Will I
do well from now on?”—and more from the existential dread—“Am I truly loved?”
Paul targets the root of that dread. Rather than trying first to persuade the
believer’s inner feelings, he first declares God’s saving action. It is not my
hand clinging to myself, but God’s hand holding me that determines the
continuity of salvation.
For that reason, the
question of verse 31 is not designed to invite debate; it is designed to end
it. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Pastor David Jang cautions
against consuming this sentence merely as a slogan for “emotional courage.”
This is less a psychological prescription for spiritual battle and more a legal
declaration that clarifies ownership: to whom does salvation belong? If a
person tries to defend himself by the evidence of his own spiritual report
card, his soul will inevitably rise and fall with the daily fluctuations of
condition and emotion. But the premise that God is “for us” becomes the ground
upon which the believer’s identity remains intact—beyond external circumstances
and internal moods. Here Paul does not build assurance on an optimistic
temperament or on self-suggestion. He builds it upon an unchanging verdict: God
has already pronounced, “righteous.” As we meditate on this text, we are freed
from the habit of misunderstanding faith as “my ability to hold on to God,” and
we are led to relocate the center of faith to “the grace by which God holds on
to me.”
Paul then drives the logic
of salvation toward its summit. Verse 32 offers evidence that the certainty of
verse 31 is not floating in the air as mere comfort. “He who did not spare his
own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, with him, freely give
us all things?” The pinnacle of Pastor David Jang’s preaching also consistently
gathers here. The true weight of the claim “God is for us” is measured by this
fact: God “gave up” the Son. The one historical center that prevents the
statement “God loves us” from remaining abstract is the cross. Christian
assurance is not the prediction that “things will get better,” but the
confidence that flows from a redeeming fact that has already happened: the Son
was given up. My emotions do not verify grace; grace re-educates my emotions.
My thoughts do not sit in judgment over God’s will; God’s will compels my
thoughts to surrender. As Isaiah declares, God’s ways and thoughts are higher
than human ways and thoughts. Pastor David Jang connects precisely this “height”
to the believer’s dignity and peace. If God has purchased us at the highest
price, then no one has the right to cheapen that valuation—no one at all, not
even I myself.
To press this point more
deeply into our imagination, we may recall a visual testimony: Caravaggio’s
early–seventeenth-century masterpiece, The Sacrifice of Isaac. In
the painting, Abraham’s hand grips Isaac, the knife is raised, and yet an
angel’s intervention stops the moment just before the irreversible blow. The
shock of the scene lies not only in its tragic tension, but in what it reveals:
the Genesis language, “you did not withhold your son,” exposes both what kind
of resolve is possible for a human being—and, at the same time, that such human
resolve remains only symbol and foreshadowing. Abraham, in the end, does not
actually lose Isaac. God, however, does not remain within the realm of
foreshadow. He truly gives up the Son. This is why Paul’s wording in Romans
8:32 seems to place Abraham’s tradition as a kind of background frame. If the
finest human devotion is a “type,” then God’s love is the “substance.” That is
why the phrase Pastor David Jang often emphasizes—“the price of blood”—is not
sentimental rhetoric but an ontological declaration. I am not a person who
merely happened to turn out acceptable; I am a person purchased and claimed at
the cost of atoning blood.
When we enter verse 33,
the courtroom imagery becomes even sharper. “Who will bring a charge against
God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.” In explaining this line, Pastor
David Jang stresses that the believer’s enemy is not only outward persecution.
A more persistent accuser may be hidden within: the “self-accusation” that
rises from inside. Believers often fail to distinguish between guilt that leads
to repentance and condemnation that crushes the soul; under the name of
repentance, they endlessly prosecute themselves. If repentance is a turning—an
actual reorientation toward God—then self-condemnation is an attempt to drag
God’s declared verdict of justification back into a human courtroom and request
a retrial. But Paul’s response is decisive: in the place of accusation, the one
who possesses the final authority is God—and if that God has pronounced,
“righteous,” who can overturn the judgment? Here election is not a privilege
that breeds arrogance, but a shield that protects the believer from the last
assault that seeks to destroy him. When Pastor David Jang speaks of the
“perseverance of the saints,” he does not mean the aesthetics of human grit—how
a person stubbornly hangs on until the end. He means the aesthetics of God’s
faithfulness—how God does not let go until the end. Perseverance flows not from
the believer’s willpower but from the promise that arises from God’s character.
Paul’s questions receive
their final seal in verse 34. “Who is the one who condemns?” And immediately
the ground is given: because there is Christ Jesus—who not only died, but was
raised; who is at the right hand of God; and who intercedes for us. Pastor
David Jang connects this confession to the Apostles’ Creed, guiding listeners
so that Christ’s death and resurrection, ascension, and enthronement at the
right hand do not remain as mere doctrinal sentences. The believer fears
because “judgment exists,” yet the believer rests because “the Judge is also my
Intercessor.” In a courtroom, the most terrifying reality is not the existence
of the bench, but standing alone without an advocate. Paul does not leave the
believer in that condition. Christ is not only the one who died for me in the
past; he is the one who prays for me even now. This ongoing, present-tense
intercession means that the believer’s salvation is not tied only to a past
event; it is being applied with living validity in the heavenly court at this
very moment.
At this point, Pastor
David Jang highlights that the intercession of the Holy Spirit and the
intercession of Christ operate together, preventing us from viewing the
Christian life as an isolated individual’s solitary struggle. Faith is often
distorted into a competition of “how strong I am,” but Romans 8 is a
declaration of “how sure God is.” That is why grace and peace cannot be
separated. Grace comes first, and grace gives birth to peace. Just as the
Hebrew greeting shalom does not merely mean the absence of war
but the wholeness in which every domain of life is aligned under God, so the
peace Jesus speaks of in John 14 is not the world’s superficial relief, but a
deep stability that rises from restored relationship with God. Pastor David
Jang does not reduce this peace to a gentle feeling; he explains it as the
order of the soul that flows out from salvation’s objective foundation.
Whenever I am shaken, the place to which I must return is not my resolve, but
God’s resolve—the resolve that did not spare the Son.
The practical benefit this
passage gives believers is striking: it prevents us from using faith as fuel
for anxiety. Many believers live imagining, “Because I am lacking, God may
abandon me.” But Paul presses the question: if God gave up the Son, what could
he possibly still be unwilling to give afterward? This is not a logic that
drives the believer into moral carelessness. On the contrary, it drives the
believer into gratitude and reverent awe. The more one understands a love for
which a real price has been paid, the less one can treat oneself as disposable.
Pastor David Jang uses the word “self-torment” to name the violence believers
sometimes inflict upon themselves. The self-hatred of the saved is not
humility; it can be another face of unbelief that refuses to honor the worth of
grace. Just as the Christian understanding of humanity stands on two axes—God’s
image and human sinfulness—so believers must acknowledge that they are sinners,
and at the same time acknowledge their new identity as those forgiven and
purchased by blood. Awareness of sin is a doorway to grace; but clinging to
guilt while refusing grace is like turning back while standing at the door.
Therefore, Romans 8:31–34
rescues “assurance of salvation” from being reduced to a probability
calculation. Assurance does not arise because the odds are high that I will
perform well. It arises because God’s completed saving work surrounds me. Paul
binds foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification
into a single, clean line of logic so that the believer will not measure God’s
faithfulness by the instability of his own life. What he repeatedly emphasizes
is ultimately one thing: God’s love is larger than our thoughts, and we must
receive that love before we fully understand it. Faith is not the victory of
comprehension; it is the decision to welcome. Yet that welcoming is not a blind
leap. It is trust built upon the historical fact of the cross.
For believers today, the
meaning of this passage becomes even more vivid. In an age where anxiety has
become ordinary, people search for techniques to stabilize the mind. Scripture,
however, offers not a technique to calm the heart, but a foundation that can
hold the heart. That foundation is the declaration, “God is for us,” and the
evidence for that declaration is the event, “He did not spare his own Son.” As
a result, believers become bold toward the world, honest toward themselves, and
newly awakened to the preciousness of the church. The theme that often appears
in Pastor David Jang’s preaching—“the joy of a small church, a small
community”—is likely a fruit of this very awareness. Not size but identity
determines the church’s dignity. Where people know that they are a community
bought at the price of blood, there emerges a joy and self-respect that are
difficult to explain. This self-respect is not pride; it is a dignity that
flows from grace. I am not precious because I am impressive. I am precious because
God has regarded me as precious.
Paul’s questions finally leave a single confession on the believer’s lips: “Who can be against me? Who can accuse me? Who can condemn me?” And the conclusion of that confession is “Christ Jesus.” The one who died and was raised, who is at the right hand of God, and who even now intercedes. The most practical gift Pastor David Jang seeks to give believers through this passage is precisely this: on an unshakable structure of salvation, to raise up a shaken heart again. When doubt rises, not to absolutize my thoughts, but to kneel humbly before the height of God’s thoughts. And at last, to admit that my coming judgment seat is not first a place of terror, but a place of grace. If Christ is my Judge and at the same time my Advocate, then the believer’s future is not an unknown territory of fear, but the promised horizon of grace. In this sense, Romans 8:31–34 is one of the strongest spiritual shields given to believers, and Pastor David Jang’s preaching can be understood as an attempt to refashion that shield in today’s language and place it into the hands of the saints. Before the God who is for us, we no longer make ourselves our own enemy; we walk forward with courage in grace.
davidjang.org
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