When Jean Valjean is brought back under arrest, the bishop gives him two silver candlesticks as well. This scene from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables offers a vivid portrait of mercy that refuses to abandon someone who has done wrong. With that scene in mind, reading the exposition of Romans 9:1–5 by Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, brings fresh meaning to the tears that follow Paul’s declaration of salvation’s assurance. Grace does not stop at the relief of knowing that we ourselves have been saved. It deepens into love for our brothers and sisters who have not yet embraced the gospel.
With the Assurance of Salvation Come Tears for Our Brothers and Sisters
In Romans 8:38–39, Paul declares that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. For those shaken by guilt and fear, few words offer deeper comfort. Yet immediately after that declaration, the opening of chapter 9 reveals great sorrow and unceasing anguish. At the very point where the joy of salvation rings out most powerfully, Paul weeps over the salvation of his fellow Israelites.
“Even if I were cut off from Christ.” This confession in Romans 9:3 becomes all the more poignant when placed alongside his preceding assurance. The man who has just declared that nothing can separate him from God’s love now expresses his willingness to be accursed for the sake of his own people. Paul affirms that his conscience bears witness in the Holy Spirit, making clear that these are neither casually spoken words nor an invented display of emotion.
Pastor David Jang reads these two confessions not as a contradiction but as an expression of love deepened through union with Christ. Paul’s certainty that he had been saved did not make him indifferent to the unbelief of his fellow Israelites. Rather, precisely because he knew that love, he found it difficult to bear the reality that they remained outside the gospel. The assurance of salvation is not permission to forget our brothers and sisters; it is the strength to keep praying for them.
Those Who Enter by Grace Have No Merit to Boast Of
To understand the meaning of these tears, we must also consider the path of grace Paul himself had traveled. This is why the sermon emphasizes the teaching on salvation in Romans 1–8 before addressing election and reprobation in chapters 9–11. When we forget what has saved us, the confession that we have been chosen can easily become a way of exalting ourselves. Yet at the starting point of grace stands not a self who is better than others, but a self in need of forgiveness.
In Romans 1–4, Jews and Greeks alike stand before the reality of sin. No one can claim righteousness through works of the law or human merit. The fact that Abraham was justified by faith before he was circumcised also shows that the door of salvation is not open only to those who have proved themselves worthy. Faith means relying on the atoning work of Jesus Christ rather than presenting our own achievements.
Romans 5:8 makes clear that this love was given while we were still sinners. Love did not begin only after we had become worthy of being loved. Believers who have been justified now walk the path of sanctification, fighting sin and practicing obedience with the help of the Holy Spirit as they look toward the completion of their salvation. Throughout the journey from justification through sanctification to glorification, grace is both the door through which we first enter and the power that moves our lives today.
Paul himself had once persecuted the church. After encountering Christ, he was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, yet the persecution and threats against his life that he suffered from his own people could not erase his love for them. For someone who remembered the grace that had reached him even when he was an enemy, a brother who rejected the gospel was not someone to be lightly given up on. His evangelism was not the work of a superior person looking down on those who were deficient. It was the movement of someone who had first received forgiveness, taking another step toward his brothers and sisters.
His calling as an apostle to the Gentiles did not mean that he could forget his own people. For Paul, a new path of mission did not erase his enduring love for those to whom he already belonged. The gospel’s advance into a wider world did not make the salvation of those close to him any less significant. His tears show that the breadth of mission and the depth of love must grow together.
The Grace of Election Leads Us to Humility Before Others
In Romans 9:4–5, Paul recounts what Israel had received: adoption as God’s children, the glory, the covenants, the law, worship, and the promises. From them, according to the flesh, came Christ himself. This list is not a rhetorical ornament intended to heighten his criticism of his own people. It is the language of grief made deeper by his knowledge of the grace they had received. Paul’s heart aches because many of those who had treasured the promises were not accepting their fulfillment.
Reflecting on this passage also leads us to reconsider our familiar patterns of worship and our long histories of faith. Knowing the promise and responding to it in faith are not the same thing. Paul’s sorrow first illuminates our own hearts, asking whether we boast of grace received in the past while postponing obedience in the present. Before speaking of another person’s hardness of heart, we are led to examine ourselves: we, too, can remain close to the things of grace while growing distant in heart.
How, then, should we understand God’s election alongside human unbelief? This sermon considers election and reprobation in light of God’s sovereignty, human responsibility, and the response of faith. Rather than portraying God as rejecting someone for no reason, it takes seriously the disobedience and hardness of heart of those who refuse the gospel. When this discussion is detached from Paul’s grief, the salvation of living people can become a cold exercise in classification.
The way set before us in Romans 10:9–10 is not to establish our own righteousness but to believe in our hearts and confess Jesus as Lord. We must not obscure the responsibility involved in unbelief, but neither should those who speak of that responsibility forget the grace they themselves have received. When judgment toward those who do not yet believe comes before prayer, we need to examine not merely our knowledge of election but the heart that holds that knowledge. The lips that explain doctrine and the eyes that look upon a brother or sister should not speak of two different faiths.
The sermon illuminates this responsibility through Jacob’s approach to Esau in Genesis 33. Jacob, who had received the blessing, sends gifts to his brother and bows to the ground seven times as he seeks reconciliation. When he confesses that seeing his brother’s face is like seeing the face of God, we glimpse a journey of faith that does not end with obtaining a blessing. The joy of being chosen does not remove the need to humble oneself before a brother.
Pastor David Jang describes this responsibility as a “debt of love” toward neighbors who have not yet been saved. Salvation received by grace must not harden into a privilege we keep to ourselves. Gratitude before God must be joined to concern for the brothers and sisters we have left behind in unresolved conflict. The depth of theological insight is revealed less by how precisely we classify others than by how we live out the love we have received within our relationships.
On the Path of Repentance, Hope Leaves Room for a Return
In Romans 11, Paul responds with a firm no to the question of whether God has rejected his people. He himself is an Israelite called by grace, and God has still preserved a remnant. The reality that many have stumbled is not grounds for closing the door on the hope of restoration. Paul faces unbelief honestly without surrendering his hope in God’s saving work.
The image of a wild olive branch grafted into a cultivated olive tree calls Gentile believers to lay aside their pride. They cannot stand in a place they did not gain by their own strength and boast over the original branches. This is also why Romans 11:22 directs our attention to both the kindness and the severity of God. We need a faith that neither treats sin and unbelief lightly nor withdraws its hope for those who may repent and return.
What this sermon emphasizes is not the act of pronouncing a final judgment on someone who has left, but the posture of continuing to pray for that person. It means refusing to erase from our hearts the place to which someone might return simply because that person rejects the gospel today. To see present hardness of heart without closing off the possibility of restoration is sometimes a more difficult act of obedience than declaring the salvation we have received. Yet it is precisely there that the love revealed in Paul’s tears perseveres.
The movement of the passage ultimately leads to the exhortation in Romans 12 to offer our lives to God. Presenting our bodies as a holy, living sacrifice cannot be separated from caring for fellow members of the body, loving our enemies, and overcoming evil with good. This meditation on Scripture, therefore, cannot end with the satisfaction of having understood election and reprobation. The question that remains is whose name the grace we have understood brings into our prayers, and toward whom it moves us in service.
We may think of a family member estranged through conflict, a brother or sister we have inwardly given up on, or someone for whom we no longer pray because that person has rejected the gospel. Paul’s confession moves their names from a list of those we condemn into the place of prayer. As I rejoice today that nothing can separate me from God’s love, whom am I too readily cutting off from my own?
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.
