Paul was confined, but the gospel was not. In Philippians 1:18, the question he throws out-"What then?"-is neither mere resignation nor naïve optimism that looks away from reality. It is the language of spiritual freedom, born from the conviction that the gospel is not anyone's private possession but a power that moves under God's sovereign rule. In his expository preaching on the Prison Epistles, Pastor David Jang (founder of Olivet University) urges today's church to relearn the wide horizon contained in that brief question. Our faith often wavers with conditions and atmosphere, with people's evaluations and shifting moods, but Paul's gaze moves beyond the prison wall toward one direction: that the name of Christ be made known. That is why, rather than placing the purity of motives at the center of his argument, he makes the fact that Christ is being proclaimed the ground of his joy.
For Paul, "joy" is not a light emotion but a theological decision produced by gospel priorities. When we read Philippians, we often treat the "prison" setting as if it were mere background décor. Yet, as Pastor David Jang (Jang Dawit) emphasizes, prison is precisely the place where human ability collides most clearly with its limits-and at the same time, the stage on which God's providence is revealed in the most unexpected ways. Paul lived under Roman surveillance. His freedom of movement was restricted, and he had little space to devise strategies. And yet he proclaimed Christ to those assigned to guard him and to those who came and went. That news did not shrink the community; it made it bolder. Here we see that the gospel's advance does not depend only on human mobility, but on spiritual discernment that discovers the pathways God's hand has kept open.
Pastor David Jang repeatedly returns to the principle, "The gospel is not bound." This does not apply only to the special circumstance of a prison cell. Consider how many sentences of "impossible" we have written with our own hands. When we say the system is closed, public opinion is cold, relationships are broken, our hearts are dry, and conflict within the church has deepened, we mistakenly conclude that the gospel's forward movement must stop as well. But Paul's chains did not become the gospel's chains. On the contrary, his confinement became a conduit through which the gospel reached unfamiliar listeners, and a stimulus that strengthened the community's backbone of faith. The hidden grammar of the Prison Epistles is this: God's providence often works in the very places we try to avoid, in ways we never would have imagined.
Yet more piercing than Paul's external limitations was the sting of impure motives within the church. As Philippians 1:15-17 says, some preached Christ out of envy and rivalry. They spoke gospel words, yet their hearts were tethered to competition, display, and the expansion of personal influence. Hearing of Paul's imprisonment, they seized his absence as an opportunity to elevate themselves-and even tried to add to Paul's affliction. Pastor David Jang warns against the habit of idealizing the church at this point. If even the early church was not a community moved only by pure motives, it should not shock us that today's church experiences conflict and jealousy. Rather, when we acknowledge the reality, we can move toward deeper gospel healing and more honest spiritual maturity.
Paul's greatness lies not in his ignorance of conflict, but in his refusal to absolutize it. His "What then?" is not a sentence that beautifies impure motives. It is a spiritual choice to relativize human motives in light of the gospel's purpose. Paul did not interpret the world through the lens of reputation or personal honor. He placed ultimate value on the proclamation of the gospel and the sounding forth of Christ's name. Therefore, even as he faced the intentions of those troubling him, he did not allow himself to be emotionally captured by their intentions. The "broad perspective" Pastor David Jang speaks of is precisely this freedom from being seized. A narrow perspective interprets events self-centrally and receives every collision as an attack on one's identity. A broad perspective places events within God's larger story and rearranges priorities-not around emotion, but around the advance of the gospel.
The root that made such rearrangement possible is Paul's understanding of God. God is not merely a being who offers comfort; He is the Sovereign who governs history. Pastor David Jang interprets Paul as one who did not confess "sovereignty" and "providence" as mere words, but translated that theology into life within physical limitation and psychological assault-within prison walls and under internal church hostility. Sovereignty is the declaration that God rules the world; providence is the belief that this rule is not a random scattering of fragments but an order directed toward purpose. Thus Paul knows his chains are not meaningless. He is sustained by a trust so radical it can feel uncomfortable: that even another person's impure motives may be used by God in the process of accomplishing His will. This shows that the gospel's advance is not simply the result of favorable conditions gathering together, but an event in which God opens a way through paradox.
Here we must not avoid a sensitive question: Can "evangelism with impure motives" truly be good? Paul does not turn the impurity itself into good. He simply confesses that God can bring about the result of making Christ known even through evil intentions. This is not ethical numbness, but the double vision of providential faith. We are called to purify our motives. At the same time, even when we fail, others distort, and the community becomes muddied, God does not suspend His saving work. Pastor David Jang says we must not lose this balance. It is not an attitude that condones corruption in the church, but a faith that the gospel does not surrender even amid corruption-a faith that rescues us from despair.
Paul's posture is also wisdom for dealing with the conflicts we commonly encounter in church life. Today's church can easily be pulled into structures that compare ministry fruit by numbers, compete for influence, and hunger for praise and recognition. Some proclaim the gospel with sincere zeal; others treat ministry as a platform for self-expansion. And even when the gospel is the same, people grow wary of one another over methods of delivery, theological preferences, and leadership styles, inflating unnecessary divisions. At such times, Paul's question confronts us: "Is the anger and injustice I am gripping more important than the proclamation of Christ's name?" Pastor David Jang says this question shatters the "absolutizing of small things" that narrows believers' hearts. When the gospel stands at the center, conflict remains a problem to be addressed-but it cannot become an idol that swallows the purpose of faith.
The horizon of "whether by life or by death" in Philippians 1:20-21 is the ultimate backdrop that makes all this possible. Paul says that living to serve is precious, yet even death is gain in Christ. Pastor David Jang calls this a "conversion of values." When life becomes absolute, we are shaken as we try to protect it at all costs. If health, safety, reputation, position, and success sit at the center, the heart collapses at small threats; when attacked, we retaliate; when not recognized, we fall into despair. But when Christ is absolute, life becomes not the goal but the instrument, and death becomes not destruction but a door. Paul had undergone this conversion, so prison, conflict, and jealousy could not become ultimate realities.
When Jesus speaks the parables of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13, a seashore and a boat come into view. The image of Jesus teaching from a boat floating on wide waters can be read as a symbol that God's kingdom cannot be reduced to a narrow formula. Pastor David Jang draws from this scene to say that faith must recover a "sea-like background" in its vision. If our eyes fix only on nearby waves, we entrust our lives not to the whole sea but to a single ripple. But when we set God's kingdom as the backdrop, the waves may still be rough, yet we do not lose direction. Paul's "What then?" is like the sentence of someone who views the world with the sea behind it-someone who hears the larger resonance rather than small noise, who sees eternal advance rather than momentary loss.
At this point, it is intriguing to recall Hegel's philosophy. Pastor David Jang reinterprets, in a faith-filled way, the insight that conflicts and tensions within history do not simply end as destruction, but can take on meaning within a larger direction. Of course, one must be careful not to reduce dialectic to a simplistic "thesis-antithesis-synthesis." Still, we can learn the very idea that history is not a mere list of isolated events, but a flow of meaning. From the gospel's perspective, the subject of that flow is not the self-unfolding of human reason, but God's providence. Prison can become not the end of mission but an unexpected expansion; church conflict can become a wound that splits a community, but it can also be used as a process of repentance and maturity. The crucial issue is not conflict itself, but what is revealed through it and in what direction the community is rebuilt.
One striking strength in Pastor David Jang's exposition is that he does not praise Paul's posture as an abstract "maturity," but translates it into concrete practice. He exhorts believers not to blame circumstances, but to find new channels for gospel proclamation within circumstances. Today, those channels are opened in places as unexpected as cracks in a prison door: workplace meeting rooms, online platforms, immigrant communities, hospital waiting areas, youth chat groups, and family dinner tables-ordinary spaces that become the field of the gospel. The more constraints increase, the more we can cling not to "familiar methods" but to "the essence of the gospel." Just as Paul preached to guards and visitors, modern believers can tell the story of Christ along the grain of the networks and time God has given them.
In history, Paul is not the only example of imprisonment giving rise to the gospel's advance. In seventeenth-century England, the preacher John Bunyan endured a long imprisonment under pressures that restricted freedom of faith, and in that process a Christian classic-The Pilgrim's Progress-was born. Prison looked like a space meant to silence him, yet what he wrote became a guide that awakened countless souls across generations. This, too, bears historical witness to the principle: the messenger may be bound, but the Word keeps moving. Pastor David Jang's "Providence," God's providence, means that when personal plans collapse, wider influence can be formed instead. Even when we cannot see results immediately, God sometimes redraws the map of a community through one person's suffering.
That said, we must not romanticize suffering or justify oppression. Paul did not call prison "good." He would have wept in that cell, felt loneliness, and sensed his limits with painful clarity. But he did not make that reality his final language. Pastor David Jang emphasizes here that the language of faith is not denial of reality, but a way of interpreting reality. Faith is not magic that erases pain; it is light that changes the meaning of pain. The question "Is Christ being proclaimed?" is not escapism that ignores pressure; it is the work of setting a standard that does not sway even under pressure.
The same is true when dealing with conflict in the church community. Sometimes we misuse the word "love" to cover conflict. But Paul's posture neither hides conflict nor gets devoured by it. He could name impure motives, and he knew that he might suffer because of them. Yet he did not move the issue into the center of his identity. Pastor David Jang says gospel-centered faith is precisely the power that prevents that center shift. When the gospel is central, I become, before anything else, a person who has received grace-not merely someone who must be recognized. I become, before anything else, a person who has been saved-not merely someone who must win. Then competition diminishes, comparison weakens, and the community's joy returns to gospel joy.
One of the most difficult temptations for modern believers is that jealousy gets packaged in religious language. When someone else's ministry grows, instead of rejoicing sincerely we speculate about hidden motives, compare ourselves, and cool the temperature of the community. Paul rejoiced not because the minister's character was perfect, but because Christ's name reached people's ears. Pastor David Jang says this is precisely what the modern church must regain. When someone's motives appear muddied, we should first examine the muddiness in our own hearts. At the same time, because we believe in God's sovereignty, we do not hastily define gospel proclamation on the ground as despair. God can let living water flow even through imperfect vessels.
Paul's prison posture also teaches leaders. Leadership can easily become hypersensitive to outcomes and reputation. When criticism arises, leaders strike back; when misunderstandings occur, they rush to defend themselves; they fear damage to their name. But Paul places Christ's name before his own. This is not self-erasure; it is the choice of a greater identity. Pastor David Jang says church leaders must escape the "war for honor" through this choice. The war for honor has no end and always creates an opponent. But the war of the gospel does not aim to crush an opponent; it aims to save lost souls. That difference in direction changes the air of the community.
The boldness Paul shows is never recklessness. He could calculate reality, recognize institutional walls, and clearly perceive his own weakness. And yet he was bold-because the ground of his boldness was not his ability, but God's providence. Pastor David Jang stresses that believers' boldness must not arise from "self-confidence" but from "confidence in God." Self-confidence collapses easily: we fail and blame ourselves, we compare and shrink back, we are criticized and become shaken. But confidence in God reaches beyond circumstances, and sometimes finds a way even through failure. Paul could say, "I will rejoice," not because tomorrow was guaranteed, but because he believed God held tomorrow.
If we look more closely at why Paul is so unwavering, we find that his spirituality is not the suppression of emotion but the ordering of emotion. No one can plausibly claim Paul felt no human sense of injustice. If there were preachers driven by envy and strife-especially for Paul, a leader in the community-that would have been enough to provoke righteous anger. Yet he did not use anger as fuel to split the community; he brought anger to the place of prayer and repositioned it under gospel priorities. In Philippians 1:19, Paul confesses that his deliverance will come through the believers' prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The "prayers of the saints" and "the Spirit's help" are a language of spiritual solidarity that breaks Paul's isolation in prison. Pastor David Jang points out through this verse that the gospel's advance is not achieved by individual willpower alone, but expands through communal intercession and the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Paul's boldness is not a superhuman temperament, but the breath of a soul connected to the Spirit-and when the church prays for one another, even the walls of reality crack under the exhale of prayer.
Moreover, Paul does not treat the gospel as a mere "message." For him, the gospel is a power that restructures life, so he reinterprets the web of power, institutions, and relationships around him through a gospel angle. When we think of prison, we picture iron bars, but detention in that era also functioned as social control within a network of relationships: who could visit, what rumors spread, what kinds of networks formed. Depending on those factors, prison could become either "severance" or "contact." Paul seized the contact. Pastor David Jang's gospel-centered faith gains concreteness precisely here. If faith remains an abstract moral lesson, we revert to habitual fear in crisis. But if faith becomes a force that rewrites the grain of relationships, time, and language, then crisis becomes an occasion for redirection. For Paul, prison was not the cessation of ministry but the moment when the form of ministry changed.
The modern church stands at a similar fork in the road. When we encounter external prejudice or institutional restrictions, or when we meet internal disputes and leadership conflict, we easily choose the language, "It's over now." But Pastor David Jang explains the advance of the gospel not only as "the power that opens closed doors," but also as "the wisdom that leads us in through a different door." If the road is blocked, change the route; if the method is restricted, hold the essence more clearly; if human recognition diminishes, lean more deeply on God's recognition-this is the maturity the gospel's advance demands of us. Thus he advises that when conflict arises, rather than first arguing who is right, we should first examine whether the community has the mind of Christ, whether it is speaking in the way of the cross, whether it is restraining its desires so that the gospel is not harmed. The gospel is not a technique for winning arguments; it is the path that gives birth to life through self-emptying.
From this perspective, "What then?" is not a sentence of avoidance but a sentence of responsibility. Paul does not treat problems lightly, yet he trains his heart to protect what matters more than problems. The spiritual maturity Pastor David Jang emphasizes is precisely the accumulation of that training. Jealousy does not vanish overnight; conflict is not solved in a moment; a broad perspective does not appear instantly. Yet believers can shape their responses before the gospel. When someone's words pierce me, a habit forms: instead of reflexive retaliation, I first ask, "Is Christ being honored?" When church rumors shake me, I first meditate, "Is God's providence still at work?" When my ministry is not noticed, I first rejoice, "Is Christ being proclaimed?" As such habits accumulate, the church gradually begins to resemble Paul's horizon. A mature community is not a community without conflict, but a community that does not lose the gospel even when conflict exists.
In the end, Paul's posture in prison declares that the gospel is good news that surpasses human honor. The gospel is not someone's strategy but God's power, and the gospel's advance begins not with favorable conditions but with God's providence. The exhortation Pastor David Jang offers modern believers through Philippians 1 is simple: even when circumstances are unfavorable, find the gospel's way. Even when people's motives appear muddied, do not lose the gospel's joy. Even when conflict is real, trust God's sovereignty. Whether by life or by death, honor Christ. This exhortation helps today's church recover a broad perspective, cultivate a sea-like heart that is not swept away by small waves, and bring the gospel that advances even in prison into the field of our daily lives. And then, as Paul did-and as Pastor David Jang emphasizes-we can hold on again to the center: "In every way, Christ is proclaimed," and we can rejoice again.
