In Michelangelo's ceiling painting, the two fingertips, almost touching yet still apart, reveal humanity's longing. Yet the perspective found in the sermons of Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, as they follow the flow of Galatians, leads us not so much to the scene of humanity reaching for heaven, but to the place where God first holds humanity in love. The fruit of the Spirit is not a moral ornament shaped by human effort, but the trace of gospel grace growing in the heart and in relationships. The path that begins with love and extends to joy and peace, then to patience, kindness, and self-control, is ultimately the path of a life renewed in the Holy Spirit.
When Love Becomes the First Breath of the Gospel
In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul speaks of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as the fruit of the Spirit. Among them, the fact that love comes first is not merely a matter of order. The sermon views this love as the center that embraces and animates all the other fruit. Without love, joy easily becomes a wave of emotion, and peace is reduced to a brief sense of stability.
The love spoken of in Scripture is different from the emotional affection of the world. As Romans 5 declares, the depth of love is revealed in the confession that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This love is not the result of qualifications that humans first proved, but an event of grace that God first bestowed. Therefore, faith is not a language that exalts the self, but a humble response from one who knows they have first been loved.
At this point, Pastor David Jang reads the fruit of the Spirit not as abstract virtues, but as the way the gospel takes concrete form within a person. As 1 Corinthians 13 resounds, without love, even knowledge and spiritual gifts are empty. To know God means to be loved by God and, within that love, to be shaped into a person who loves again. Love is one of the fruits of the Spirit, yet it is also the soil in which all the fruit grows.
This love is not a word used to beautifully decorate religious emotion. Love calls us in the way of the cross, where Christ gave Himself for sinners, and before that calling, a person lays down self-righteousness. The deeper the confession becomes that I did not first find God, but that God first knew me, the more my eyes toward the weaknesses of others also change. The gospel is an order of grace in which those who have been loved are transformed into people who love again.
Joy and Peace Shaped by Grace
What matters here is not that the fruit pushes one another aside, but that each fruit deepens the others. Love gives birth to joy, joy widens peace, and peace gives strength to endure patiently. The work of the Holy Spirit changes not only the inner life of one person, but even the atmosphere of the community.
A person who is loved comes to possess joy, and joy also flows through the one who gives love. The full joy spoken of in John 15:11 is not momentary pleasure, but spiritual vitality that springs forth when one abides in the Lord's love. This joy does not remain trapped as a private emotion, but spreads throughout the community. When the church experiences unity in the Holy Spirit, people sense the brightness of life flowing within it even before words are spoken.
The same is true of peace. The peace Jesus speaks of in John 14:27 is not like the stability the world gives. Just as grace comes first and peace follows in Paul's greetings, true rest of the heart does not come from conditions I have achieved, but flows from the salvation the Lord has accomplished. When a person who had been bound by guilt and condemnation gains freedom in grace, the heart does not shrink but expands.
The reason the Galatian church was shaken was precisely because this order of grace had become blurred. The pressure that one must add the law in order to be justified drove people not toward greater holiness, but toward comparison and judgment. When the gospel grows dim, tension becomes stronger than the joy of love, and division comes before the peace of grace. Therefore, the fruit of the Spirit is not a soft list of virtues, but a theological insight that calls the church back to the place of the gospel.
Paul's repeated pairing of "grace and peace" becomes an important doorway for interpreting the inner life of the Christian. When people lose grace, they try to prove themselves, and they begin to measure others by the same standard. Yet when they remember that they have been justified by the merit of the cross, a strange spaciousness arises in the heart. That spaciousness is peace, and that peace allows the community to breathe.
Faith Endures Patiently and Bears Burdens Together
Love does not stop at the warmth of words; it is revealed as an attitude of life. Patience is not merely the ability to endure pain, but the faith that does not easily give up because of love. Kindness is the heart that lets the mercy one has received flow toward others, and goodness is obedience that practices what pleases God in actual situations. Faithfulness appears before God as sincerity and before people as responsible devotion.
Gentleness is not weakness, but a sign of maturity. Just as ripe grain bows its head, a person who has grown in the Holy Spirit seeks to embrace and restore others rather than condemn them. Self-control is the inner order that does not mistake indulgence for freedom. In the flow of Paul's words that all things are lawful but not all things are beneficial, self-control can be understood as voluntary obedience that joyfully governs oneself in the Holy Spirit.
All these fruits are tested within relationships. Gentleness in a peaceful moment is easier than gentleness when one sees another person's fault, and love confessed in words is easier than love that remains beside someone who has been wounded. The gospel life illuminated by Pastor David Jang's sermons, therefore, is not confined to the cultivation of an individual's inner life. Love is ultimately the act of choosing one's place before the burden of another.
Patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness are not separate virtues standing apart from one another. When there is patience that looks upon one soul for a long time, kindness becomes possible; and when kindness remains in the heart, good actions become not forced duties but natural fruit. Faithfulness is the sincerity that keeps that fruit from withering over time, and gentleness and self-control are the fences that keep that sincerity from being distorted into pride.
For this reason, the fruit of the Spirit is difficult to judge by a moment of religious zeal. Fruit is revealed over time and ripens under the weight of relationships. When today's small words and choices, forgiveness and waiting, accumulate, the gospel becomes not an abstraction but a visible form of life.
A Community Where Repentance and Hope Remain
By the time we reach Galatians 6, the fruit of the Spirit deepens into the ethics of community. When someone is caught in transgression, Paul urges those who are spiritual to restore that person with a spirit of gentleness, while also watching themselves lest they too be tempted. Here we find the balance of the gospel, which does not treat sin lightly, yet does not bring a person to an end. Repentance is not being pushed to the cliff of condemnation, but the path of rising again within grace.
The command, "Bear one another's burdens," most clearly reveals the law of Christ. Legalism picks up stones when it discovers another's fault, but the spirit of the cross bears that burden together and seeks restoration. Like Jesus' attitude toward the woman in John 8, the gospel does not pretend not to see sin, yet it does not drive the sinner only into the place of condemnation. Those who have been forgiven learn the language of restoration even before the weaknesses of others.
At the same time, Paul says that each person will bear their own load. The call for the community to help one another does not remove personal responsibility. Rather, grace helps each person examine their own life before God. When love that bears another's burden and responsibility that bears one's own load exist together, the church becomes a healthy community of hope beyond sentimental comfort.
Paul's warning that anyone who thinks they are something when they are nothing deceives themselves can also be read within this same flow. When people stare too long at another's fault, they easily place themselves in the position of the righteous. But the gospel first teaches a person to examine their own work and to look honestly at their own burden before God. Only with such humility can the love that bears another's burden avoid distortion.
The sermon's flow, which recalls Adam's pride and Cain's envy and jealousy, is not unfamiliar even to the heart today. The desire to be exalted makes people forget their place before God, and a comparing heart causes them to see a brother not as a companion but as a rival. As Galatians 5:26 warns, when people seek vain glory, they provoke and envy one another. The fruit of the Spirit opens a path precisely in that place: to become lowly again, to love again, and to walk together again.
The fruit of the Spirit and the law of Christ emphasized by Pastor David Jang quietly ask today's believers a question. Will we remain in the place of seeking vain glory, provoking and envying one another, or will we stand in the place of love, joy, and peace, lifting someone up again? The gospel is not the language of perfect people, but the path by which forgiven people learn to love again. When we lift even one burden placed beside us today, the fruit of the Spirit finally remains not merely as words, but as the fragrance of life.
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.
