The central axis Pastor David Jang (Olivet University) repeatedly establishes as he expounds Romans 8:18-27 is this: he refuses to confine the Christian life to the emotions and circumstances of the "here and now," and instead lifts it into the vast horizon of God's redemptive history. When Paul declares, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18), he neither romanticizes hardship nor forcibly erases pain. Rather, he honestly acknowledges how weighty our real experiences can be-loss and pressure, fractured relationships and bodily weakness, the cost of keeping faith, and the loneliness that can follow. And yet Paul confronts these realities head-on with a single word: "compare." Pastor David Jang says this comparison is not a mere mental victory, but a theological shift. It does not shrink the reality of suffering; it expands the reality of glory, placing suffering under a different light.
At the heart of this shift lies a biblical sense of time. "For in this hope we were saved" (Rom. 8:24) feels grammatically strange at first glance. In a single sentence, the certainty of something already received and the forward-looking orientation of hope breathe together. Pastor David Jang explains that within this phrase is the believer's position in the tension of the "already and not yet." We have already been justified in Christ and are called God's children, yet the completion of salvation still lies ahead. Faith, then, is not the echo of a finished event, but a present-tense journey toward a guaranteed future. Paul's paradox that "what is seen is not hope" (Rom. 8:24) does not mean we should ignore reality; it means we must not absolutize it. The moment we believe the visible world is all there is, we learn the language of despair. The moment we believe the invisible promise is the deeper reality, we begin to learn the language of endurance.
When Pastor David Jang says, "If the front side is glory, the back side is suffering-like two sides of a coin," he is not arguing that suffering is a "condition" we can trade in order to obtain glory. Rather, he is reminding us that the Christian path resembles the trajectory of Jesus, who passed through the cross toward resurrection. To share in "the sufferings of Christ" does not mean suffering itself is good; it means that as we pass through suffering, union with Christ deepens and the eyes of faith are refined. Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount-"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:10)-also show that suffering is not an eternal loss but is tied to the greater reality of God's kingdom. Even when Pastor David Jang uses the expression "reward-focused faith," he is not promoting a cheap prosperity formula. He is emphasizing that because God's promised future is real, today's sacrifice and endurance do not vanish into thin air. In other words, reward is not a bargaining chip humans present to move God; it is another name for the faithfulness God guarantees by His own character.
Paul's proclamation that present suffering is "not worth comparing" reshapes how we live. The world reads suffering only as a sign of failure, but following Paul, Pastor David Jang invites us to see suffering as "a place of interpretation." When hardship comes, we quickly look for causes-blaming ourselves, blaming others-or we sink into a swamp of meaninglessness. But Romans 8 teaches not a simplified explanation of suffering, but "training in perspective": holding suffering while looking toward the future. This perspective is not irresponsible optimism; it is grounded in the fact that God has already given the Holy Spirit as a "guarantee." As Pastor David Jang stresses, the Spirit is a preview and firstfruits of the glory to come-therefore, even within tears, believers are called to learn the language of glory.
Pastor David Jang reads Romans 8 in a particularly "cosmic hope of salvation" sense because Paul's vision expands beyond the individual heart to encompass the whole created order. In "the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19), Paul strikingly grants creation itself the posture of expectation. The Greek word translated "eager longing," ἀποκαραδοκία, portrays the image of craning one's neck forward, stretching to see what is coming. Pastor David Jang says that the tension and yearning in this word reveals that the created world is not merely a backdrop for humanity; it participates in God's drama of redemption. Not only humans long for salvation-rather, the entire world, wounded by human sin, longs for liberation. When Paul says, "the whole creation has been groaning together... until now" (Rom. 8:22), that groaning is not merely the noise of nature; it is testimony to the universal consequences of the fall, and at the same time the birth pains that signal restoration is drawing near.
Pastor David Jang connects this to the Genesis narrative of the fall. The declaration that the ground is cursed (Genesis 3) is not merely about difficulty in farming; it reveals that the relationship between humanity and the world has been fundamentally twisted. The "dominion" God entrusted to human beings was originally not oppression, but care and cultivation-responsibility, service, and stewardship. Sin, however, does not make humans rulers of love and mercy; it turns them into agents of greed and violence. As a result, creation is "subjected to futility" (Rom. 8:20). Futility is an existence that has lost its aim-life with its direction bent off course. Pastor David Jang points out that this futility does not remain only within the individual's inner life; it spreads into social structures, economic systems, and ecological fracture. Therefore, cosmic salvation is not a narrow prescription that addresses only personal guilt; it is a gospel-scale vision that helps us look toward God's comprehensive restoration of the created order.
This perspective applies sharply to our own era. Climate crisis, environmental destruction, repeated disasters, and a culture that treats life as disposable vividly call to mind Romans 8's "groaning of creation." Pastor David Jang's cosmic salvation does not encourage the optimism of "humans can fix everything if we try hard enough." Instead, it calls for a realism of faith: acknowledging human limits while clinging more deeply to God's promise to renew all things. For that very reason, the church cannot remain a bystander. If creation groans and the redeemed community responds with indifferent silence, hope deteriorates into an abstract slogan. Pastor David Jang says that because hope is great, even small acts of practice do not lose their meaning. One person's restraint, one community's care, one generation's responsible choices do not replace the completion of cosmic salvation; they become humble obedience that participates in the restoration God has already begun. Caring for the environment, protecting the vulnerable, and reducing injustice are not "turning the gospel into social activism," but tasting in advance-within real life-the reign of God's kingdom that the gospel inherently bears.
Paul goes on: creation "will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). Pastor David Jang emphasizes here that "liberation" is not merely a spiritual mood change; it is an ontological transformation. Corruption refers not only to the wear of time, but to the structures of destruction and habits of consumption produced by sin. When humans consume the world at the speed of greed, not only nature but also the human soul and relationships are worn down together. Thus, the freedom of glory is not the freedom of self-indulgence, but the freedom of being restored to one's proper place within a reconciled order. When creation is liberated, humanity is liberated as well. This leads believers to receive ecological responsibility not as an optional add-on, but as a texture of life worthy of salvation-and at the same time to become more sensitive to the groaning of the socially oppressed, because the groaning of creation is also linked to the tears of those who are crushed.
The restoration Paul envisions is not annihilation but renewal. When Revelation speaks of "a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. 21), it is not a story of discarding creation and escaping to another world. "Behold, I am making all things new" (Rev. 21:5) points to God's active saving work: He does not leave what is broken abandoned; He renews it. Acts' phrase "the time for restoring all things" (Acts 3:21) moves in the same direction. Pastor David Jang stresses that biblical eschatology is not the pessimism of catastrophe but the hope of restoration. Believers are not people who view the end only with fear; they are people who wait for the end and therefore live today more faithfully. The future being settled does not make the present meaningless; it makes present choices heavier. Cosmic salvation is not an anesthetic that dulls responsibility; it is a bell that awakens responsibility.
When Pastor David Jang speaks of cosmic salvation, he speaks about the future in a way that makes the present weightier. That is because future completion does not erase the present; it transforms the present into "a place of rehearsal." The church does not yet possess the finished product of the new heaven and new earth, but it is called to be a community that lives out the grammar of that world in advance. Worship is not merely emotional recharging on Sunday; it is a time when the values of God's kingdom rearrange our bodies, our language, and our relationships. Pastor David Jang says the hope of Romans 8 does not separate worship from ethics. Lips that praise God in worship cannot despise creation or disregard neighbors during the week. Conversely, hands that practice small good in daily life testify that the hope confessed in worship is not a lie. In this way, the church becomes both a place that "waits" for future glory and a place that "partially reveals" that glory.
If we wanted a visual anchor for this eschatological perspective, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel altar fresco, The Last Judgment, could serve as an apt metaphor. That immense scene is easily read as an image designed to provoke fear, but if we look more closely, it carries a message that history is not scattered at random-it converges toward truth and justice, judgment and restoration. Its composition, holding heaven and earth, soul and body, individual and community together in a single frame, echoes the integrative cosmic salvation of Romans 8. The groaning of creation and the groaning of believers are not two separate sounds; they are a chorus that continues until a world is made new. When Pastor David Jang explains "groaning," he helps us understand it not as the sigh of defeat but as the breath of labor pains before birth. Labor pains are painful, but their direction is not destruction-it is life.
So, within this big picture, how should we live? Pastor David Jang reads Paul's words-"If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Rom. 8:25)-as a "theology of endurance." This endurance is not passive resignation. Endurance is active perseverance in direction, a decision to guard what matters most, and the wisdom to arrange today according to the rhythm of God's kingdom. Waiting includes choices: choosing to stand with justice even when there is no immediate payoff, choosing restraint and sharing amid a culture of consumption and display, choosing to weep with those whose voices are buried, choosing to lay down personal desires for the common good of the church. Pastor David Jang's "reward-focused faith" can be understood rightly in this context and avoids distortion. Reward is not "a certificate of confirmation in my hand right now," but the future certainty that God will surely fulfill His promise. Therefore, believers do not become impatient to seize reward; they remain steady because they trust the promise.
In this sense, the waiting Pastor David Jang commends through Romans 8 requires spiritual formation. To "see" future glory is not vague imagination; it is a practiced discipline of vision. By meditating on the Word, we learn a language that interprets suffering; through prayer that holds both gratitude and groaning, we recalibrate the direction of the heart; within community, we share one another's burdens and train the muscles of endurance. Pastor David Jang especially emphasizes "the memory of hope." Remembering how God has guided in the past and how the cross and resurrection altered the center of history becomes a breakwater that prevents us from exaggerating present storms. When memory fades, suffering looks like everything; when memory is alive, suffering is repositioned as a "process." Thus believers can live today not swept away by waves of emotion, but standing on the deep current of God's promises.
Yet those who walk this path repeatedly discover how weak they are. The heart grows weary, thoughts become cloudy, and there are days when we do not even know what or how to ask. It is precisely then that Romans 8:26-27 comes near like the core of the gospel: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness... the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Rom. 8:26). Pastor David Jang calls this passage "the secret of prayer," saying prayer does not depend on our skill. We do not know what we ought to pray for. Our words are often self-centered, our emotions easily overheat, and our insight is limited. Yet the Spirit does not accuse our lack; He takes even our lack as material and "translates" it into intercession aligned with God's will. The sentence "He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:27) declares that our confusion is not abandoned before God. The Spirit's groaning is not discouragement but the depth of love, and His intercession is God's active response to our powerlessness. Pastor David Jang says this intercession does not make us passive; it raises us up again to participate in God's will.
Moreover, Paul's teaching implies that the Spirit's intercession is not separated from the intercession of Jesus Christ. Scripture also says Christ "always lives to make intercession" for us (Heb. 7:25). Pastor David Jang connects these truths, explaining that the believer's prayer is not "a ladder we must climb alone to reach God," but an event that happens on a path already opened in Christ. We come boldly by the Son's grace, learn what to ask by the Spirit's help, and wait for God's answer within the Father's goodness. Prayer thus becomes not an experience of failure but an experience of grace. Some days, the fact that prayer does not "go well" may itself be a blessing: in that moment we learn humility, admitting we cannot control prayer and entrusting ourselves to the Spirit's intercession. The freedom of prayer Pastor David Jang often speaks of arises from this entrusting. God does not answer by measuring our completeness; He is the One who calls us His children and holds us to the end.
As Pastor David Jang emphasizes this, prayer is restored from being a "formal obligation" or a "metric of spiritual achievement" into a relationship of grace. Prayer is not a technique for persuading God; it is time in which we are held by God. Sometimes, even when words do not come, when silence is long, when only tears remain, that place is not wasted-because the Spirit works there, groaning. Believers learn to set aside the urge to produce results quickly and to lay their weakness honestly before God. In that moment, prayer becomes not "a tool to push through my plan" but "a process of aligning me with God's will." As Pastor David Jang often says, prayer makes a person before it produces an answer. And the heart of that formation is the dismantling of pride and the shaping of humility-re-centering life on God.
The Spirit's intercession also forms community beyond the individual. The church often grows weak not because it lacks ability, but because it fails to carry one another's weakness. When the language of competition and comparison rules a community, suffering becomes an individual's shame and groaning is mistaken for complaint. But Romans 8 restores groaning as the Spirit's language. Groaning is not condemnation; it is solidarity. When one member collapses, another can weep with them. When one person loses direction, the community can pray together and regain the path. Pastor David Jang's idea of "the church as one body" does not mean mere emotional closeness; it points to an "intercessory network" in which the Spirit's groaning for one person is shared within the community and becomes mutual intercession. In Pastor David Jang's preaching, prayer is not only a task of private devotion; it is the way the church remains the church-the way the body of Christ keeps its living vitality.
The word "groaning" also tells believers not to be ashamed of sorrow. Pastor David Jang interprets groaning not as a deficiency of faith but as a depth of faith. Just as the Psalms often protest to God and plead with tears, groaning is not an act of cutting off relationship with God; it is an act of clinging to God. If the church loses groaning, it risks overlooking the suffering of the weak and becoming numb to the fractures of the world. But if the church recovers groaning, it learns to listen longer to the stories of those who suffer, to sense more delicately the groaning of creation, and to mature into waiting together even when there is no immediate solution. In this way, groaning rescues the community from cynicism and makes love more concrete. The "groanings too deep for words" that Pastor David Jang draws from Romans 8 is, in the end, the deepest tone of God's promise that He has not abandoned us.
Romans 8:23's phrase "the redemption of our bodies" again confirms how concrete cosmic salvation is. If salvation were only an escape story that rescues the soul alone, bodily pain and the fatigue of labor, mental anguish and social wounds could be pushed aside as secondary. But Paul says we wait for the redemption of our bodies, making clear that salvation includes matter, history, and the actual places of life. Pastor David Jang draws two simultaneous exhortations from this: first, do not treat your own body carelessly; second, do not treat another person's body lightly. A sick body, a tired body, a discriminated body, a body needing care-none of these are excluded from God's redemptive drama. Therefore, the church must be a community that cares for bodies as it comforts souls. This is not mere social service; it is an act of embodying-here and now-the order of restoration toward which cosmic salvation is moving.
Paul's next statement-"for those who love God all things work together for good" (Rom. 8:28)-can easily be consumed as a cliché. But Pastor David Jang insists it must be read together with "the Spirit's groaning." It is not that everything automatically becomes good; rather, it is possible because God is the One who works for good, and because the Spirit holds us toward that good. It does not mean that incomprehensible events instantly receive an explanation. It means that even in times that cannot be explained, we trust that God has not stopped working. Therefore believers do not place a period after despair. Despair may be a sentence, but the gospel adds a new clause after it. Hope does not begin only after suffering ends; hope begins already in the middle of suffering, and that hope is sustained by the Spirit's intercession. The "strength to look toward future glory even in headwinds," as Pastor David Jang puts it, is born here.
In a single line, what Pastor David Jang draws out of Romans 8 is "the grammar of hope." This grammar does not deny suffering, yet places it under glory; it widens vision from the individual to the cosmos; and it transforms human helplessness into new possibility within the Spirit's intercession. Therefore, walking through Romans 8:18-27 is not an escape into romantic fantasy, but a path into deeper responsibility toward reality. The questions naturally follow: With what do I interpret my present? How do I stand before the groaning of creation? What do I rely on in prayer? Pastor David Jang does not use these questions as a whip of guilt. Rather, he uses questions to restore direction-and through restored direction, to help people walk again. Faith is not the ability to possess perfect answers, but the grace-filled repetition of continually turning back toward the right direction.
In the end, believers are pilgrims. Pilgrims do not enjoy completion on the road, but they are people who know their destination. Those who know the destination do not interpret the present night only through fear. Because they are certain dawn will come, they do not lose direction even in darkness. As Pastor David Jang says, a person of faith is one who, piercing the darkness, sees in advance the dawn that is breaking. That dawn enables us to endure present suffering with meaning, not to ignore the groaning of creation, and not to abandon prayer. And the light of that dawn does not come from our competence. The Holy Spirit intercedes within us with inexpressible groanings, and God leads history with the sovereignty by which He renews all things. Therefore, today's small obedience and prayer, small restraint and care, small endurance and love never scatter into futility. They are seeds already connected to the world of glory that will be revealed, and-as Pastor David Jang proclaims through Romans 8-signs that the kingdom of God is already sprouting on this earth.
To read Pastor David Jang's preaching on Romans 8 again is to widen the heart beyond personal assurance of salvation toward the restoration of all creation. And that widened heart makes today's church humble and courageous. That courage grows each day in the place of prayer.
