At the end of the day, the mistakes that linger in our minds are often not the ones we have readily acknowledged, but those we are still trying to explain away. We carefully weigh our decisions, defend our reasoning, and consider the consequences of our actions. Yet we rarely pause to examine the desires that shaped those decisions in the first place.
Auguste Rodin's The Thinker captures something essential about human existence: our capacity for reflection, questioning, and searching for meaning. We contemplate countless matters, yet often hesitate to confront one of the most fundamental questions of all: Who truly governs our lives?
In his sermon on Romans 1:18–32, Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, invites us to confront this question through one of Scripture's most uncomfortable themes: the wrath of God.
If God is love, why does He reveal His wrath? If the gospel is good news, why does Paul turn so quickly from proclaiming God's saving righteousness to exposing humanity's sin and judgment?
These questions are not peripheral to the Christian faith. They lead us toward the very heart of the gospel.
Without understanding the seriousness of sin, the cross can become little more than a reassuring religious symbol. Without recognizing our need for salvation, grace may seem like an abstract promise rather than the answer to humanity's deepest problem.
Paul's purpose in exposing sin is not to leave humanity imprisoned in despair. It is to reveal why we need a Savior—and why the grace offered through Jesus Christ is truly good news.
Ungodliness and Unrighteousness: The Heart That Suppresses the Truth
Romans 1:18 declares that the wrath of God is revealed against human ungodliness and unrighteousness, particularly against those who suppress the truth through unrighteousness.
The significance of this statement becomes clearer when we consider what immediately precedes it. In Romans 1:16–17, Paul announces that the gospel is the power of God for salvation and that God's righteousness is revealed through faith. Then, in verse 18, he declares that God's wrath is also being revealed.
The transition is deliberate. To understand the righteousness revealed in the gospel, we must first recognize the unrighteousness from which humanity needs to be rescued.
Paul does not begin by identifying a particular crime as the greatest human offense. Instead, he exposes a fundamental disorder in humanity's relationship with its Creator.
Pastor David Jang explains this disorder through two closely connected dimensions of sin.
Ungodliness points to the vertical dimension: humanity's failure to acknowledge, honor, and worship God as Creator. Unrighteousness points to the horizontal dimension: the corruption of human conduct and relationships that follows when God's truth is rejected.
These two dimensions cannot ultimately be separated.
When God is removed from the center of human life, the consequences extend beyond personal belief. They gradually influence how we treat others, how we understand moral responsibility, and how we justify our decisions.
This becomes especially important when we consider the way we ordinarily recognize sin.
We may readily condemn dishonesty while concealing an inconvenient truth to protect our reputation. We may affirm the importance of justice while remaining silent when speaking honestly would threaten our interests. We may criticize the selfishness of others without recognizing how deeply our own choices are shaped by self-interest.
Paul's description of those who suppress the truth confronts precisely this contradiction.
The problem is not always a lack of knowledge. Sometimes we recognize what is right but resist it because accepting the truth would require us to change.
The truth becomes uncomfortable when it challenges the stories we tell about ourselves.
Yet the wrath of God must not be confused with the unpredictable anger of human beings. Divine wrath is not an impulsive emotional reaction or an expression of wounded pride. It arises from God's holiness and His righteous opposition to evil.
The sermon therefore refuses to separate God's justice from His love.
In Isaiah 1:2–3, God speaks of the children He has raised who have nevertheless rebelled against Him. The passage conveys the sorrow of a broken relationship: those who have received His care have turned away from the One who sustained them.
The image reminds us that divine judgment is not a matter of cold detachment. God does not regard the destruction caused by human sin as insignificant.
God's wrath is not the absence of His love; it reveals His holiness and His unwavering opposition to the evil that destroys the lives He created.
To love someone does not mean pretending that wrongdoing is harmless. Nor does taking sin seriously require abandoning mercy.
For this reason, Paul's warning should not become a weapon with which we condemn others. Before judging another person's failures, we are called to examine the ways in which we ourselves have resisted the truth.
From Forgotten Gratitude to Idolatry: How the Human Heart Loses Its Center
Paul continues by explaining that humanity has received a testimony to God's existence and divine nature through creation.
According to Romans 1:19–20, God's eternal power and divine nature, though invisible, are made evident through the things He has created.
Pastor David Jang reflects on this teaching by considering both the world around us and the human capacity to contemplate its meaning.
The order of nature, the vastness of the heavens, and the remarkable conditions that sustain life can awaken a sense of wonder. Likewise, our capacity for reason and moral reflection raises questions about the source of our existence and the standards by which we distinguish good from evil.
Psalm 19 expresses this perspective poetically, portraying the heavens as declaring the glory of God.
Yet Paul's central concern is not merely whether human beings possess sufficient intellectual knowledge about their Creator.
Romans 1:21 identifies a deeper failure: although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.
This connection between the refusal to honor God and the loss of gratitude is particularly revealing.
Every day, we depend on realities we did not bring into existence. We breathe air we did not create, drink water we did not produce, and live through the labor, kindness, and sacrifice of others.
Nevertheless, what we receive continually can begin to feel like something we are entitled to possess.
The more familiar a blessing becomes, the easier it is to forget that it is a gift.
When gratitude disappears, self-sufficiency begins to take its place. We may come to believe that everything we possess is simply the result of our own intelligence, effort, or achievement.
What once inspired thankfulness gradually becomes evidence of our supposed independence.
The spiritual danger lies not in achievement itself, but in forgetting the source and meaning of what we have received.
Paul then traces the consequences of this distorted perspective.
In Romans 1:23, he describes humanity exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal creatures.
This exchange lies at the heart of idolatry.
The Creator is displaced, and something created is elevated to the position that belongs to Him alone.
Idolatry, however, is not limited to ancient religious statues or visible objects of worship. Its underlying pattern can appear wherever a finite good becomes an ultimate object of devotion.
Money is not inherently evil, but it becomes an idol when financial success determines a person's entire sense of worth.
Reputation can serve a legitimate purpose, but it becomes destructive when preserving one's image matters more than telling the truth.
Authority may be exercised responsibly, yet it becomes corrupt when retaining power becomes more important than respecting the dignity of others.
These are not merely problems of external behavior. They reveal the direction of the human heart.
One expression to which David Jang repeatedly returns in his sermon is found in Romans 1:28: humanity's refusal to retain God in its knowledge.
The problem is not simply that people forget God in the ordinary sense of becoming distracted.
Rather, they resist allowing God to occupy His rightful place in their understanding, desires, and decisions.
Human beings want to remain at the center of their own existence. When God's authority becomes inconvenient, they push Him aside and allow something else to take His place.
Idolatry ultimately asks not only what we worship outwardly, but what we love most deeply, trust most completely, and refuse to surrender—even at the expense of our conscience.
Once the center of our lives changes, everything else begins to shift with it.
Our priorities change. Our judgments change. Eventually, the way we relate to other people changes as well.
Three Times God "Gave Them Over": The Judgment of Being Left to Our Own Desires
One of the most striking features of Romans 1:18–32 is the repeated declaration that God "gave them over."
The expression appears three times, in verses 24, 26, and 28.
This repetition provides an essential key to understanding the nature of divine judgment in the passage.
God's wrath does not always manifest itself through an immediate catastrophe, visible punishment, or extraordinary intervention.
Sometimes judgment takes the form of allowing people to experience the consequences of the path they have persistently chosen.
In Romans 1:24, Paul describes God giving people over to impurity in connection with the desires of their hearts.
In verse 26, he speaks of God giving them over to dishonorable passions.
In verse 28, after describing humanity's refusal to acknowledge God, Paul declares that God gave them over to a debased mind, resulting in conduct that contradicts what is right.
The progression is significant.
The rejection of God is not presented as an isolated intellectual decision without consequences. It affects the desires of the heart, the orientation of human behavior, and ultimately the judgments through which people distinguish what is acceptable from what is destructive.
What begins as a claim to autonomy can become a condition of bondage.
A person may insist on the freedom to pursue every desire, only to discover that those desires have become increasingly difficult to resist.
What was once treated as a personal choice can gradually become a ruling power.
This is the tragic irony of sin: the pursuit of absolute independence can result in a profound loss of freedom.
Pastor David Jang does not interpret God's act of giving people over as evidence that God is indifferent to humanity.
Rather, the sermon emphasizes the seriousness of humanity's persistent rejection of God.
The passage describes divine judgment in relation to a pattern of human resistance. It should not be used to assume that every hardship, personal struggle, or painful consequence in someone's life is a direct indication of God's punitive judgment.
The warning concerns the spiritual danger of continually rejecting the truth while treating one's own desires as the highest authority.
Love cannot be reduced to coercion, yet the freedom to make choices does not eliminate responsibility for their consequences.
There are moments when the absence of visible restraint can feel like approval.
We may begin to imagine that because nothing has prevented us from pursuing a particular course, the course itself must be right.
But freedom from immediate consequences is not the same as freedom from moral accountability.
Within this larger discussion, Paul addresses distorted sexual desires and same-sex sexual acts in Romans 1:24–27. He then expands his description of unrighteousness to include greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, slander, arrogance, disobedience, faithlessness, and a lack of mercy.
The breadth of this catalogue deserves careful attention.
If we isolate one particular sin while ignoring the others, we risk losing sight of the passage's central argument.
Paul is not providing a list through which one group of people may establish its moral superiority over another.
His argument ultimately exposes the universal problem of human sin.
Indeed, the discussion that begins in Romans 1 leads directly into Romans 2, where Paul confronts those who judge others while practicing wrongdoing themselves.
The argument reaches its sweeping conclusion in Romans 3:23: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
This broader context is essential for a responsible reading of the passage.
Christians may wrestle with the theological and pastoral implications of particular verses, but Paul's wider indictment allows no reader to excuse personal wrongdoing while condemning others.
The person who harshly criticizes someone else's conduct while justifying personal greed must also stand before the truth.
So must the person who damages relationships through pride, dismisses another person's suffering, or treats dishonesty as acceptable whenever it serves a useful purpose.
The passage does not permit us to remove ourselves from the circle of those who need grace.
Romans 1:32 then describes an even deeper moral danger: people not only continue in wrongdoing but also approve of others who do the same.
This does not mean that repeated wrongdoing inevitably destroys every trace of conscience. It does, however, reveal how easily self-justification can become habitual.
"Everyone does it" becomes a familiar defense.
"If no one was hurt" becomes a convenient conclusion, sometimes without any serious consideration of the harm involved.
"If I am not criticized, it must be acceptable" replaces the more demanding question of whether something is truly right.
Eventually, the distinction between truth and social acceptance begins to blur.
The greatest danger is not merely failing to recognize what is right, but becoming so accustomed to defending what is wrong that we begin to call it good.
Paul's words challenge us to examine not only our outward behavior, but also the standards by which we have learned to justify it.
From the Recognition of Sin to the Grace of the Cross
If Romans 1 exposes the seriousness of human sin, does it leave us with nothing but fear?
The answer becomes clear when we read the passage within the larger message of the gospel.
In Mark 2:17, Jesus explains that it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. He then declares that He came to call sinners.
The image offers a powerful insight into the relationship between recognizing sin and receiving grace.
A person who refuses to acknowledge an illness has little reason to seek treatment.
Likewise, a person who refuses to confront the reality of sin may struggle to understand the necessity of salvation.
The recognition of sin is painful because it challenges our preferred understanding of ourselves.
We want to believe that our intentions are generally good, that our mistakes are understandable, and that our moral failures are less serious than those of others.
But the gospel does not begin by confirming our innocence.
It begins by telling the truth about our condition.
That truth is not meant to destroy hope. It prepares us to understand where genuine hope is found.
In his exposition of Romans, David Jang explains that Paul's diagnosis of humanity's sin leads toward the revelation of God's saving grace, developed especially in Romans 3 and the chapters that follow.
Romans 6:23 declares that the wages of sin is death. This solemn statement reveals the seriousness of humanity's separation from God and the inability of human effort to overcome sin's ultimate consequence.
Yet the same verse announces that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Here, the movement from judgment to grace becomes unmistakable.
The gospel does not deny the reality of sin. It declares that God has acted to save sinners.
John 3:16 proclaims the love of God revealed in the giving of His only Son. Romans 5:8 affirms that God demonstrated His love for us through Christ's death while we were still sinners.
The significance of these passages is profound.
God did not wait for humanity to achieve moral perfection before extending His saving love.
Nor did He simply overlook sin as though righteousness and justice no longer mattered.
Instead, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God opened the way for forgiveness, reconciliation, and new life.
The cross reveals both the gravity of sin and the astonishing depth of divine mercy.
This is why the wrath of God in Romans 1 must be read in the light of the gospel announced in Romans 1:16–17.
The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, and through faith in Jesus Christ, sinners are justified by grace.
The message of divine judgment does not compete with the message of divine love. Within Paul's larger argument, the reality of judgment reveals the urgent need for the salvation God graciously provides.
The cross is not merely a symbol of comfort in a painful world. It is the place where the seriousness of human sin and the greatness of God's saving love are brought into their clearest focus.
Pastor David Jang emphasizes that salvation is God's gracious gift, not an achievement that allows human beings to boast.
Justification by faith does not mean that we have finally accumulated enough goodness to deserve God's acceptance.
It means that through Jesus Christ, God receives sinners who could never establish their own righteousness before Him.
Salvation is not a prize awarded to those who successfully prove their moral superiority.
It is grace received through faith.
This understanding also transforms the meaning of repentance.
Repentance is not simply regret over the consequences of our actions, nor is it an attempt to purchase forgiveness through emotional suffering.
It is a genuine turning toward God.
The person who once sought to remove God from the center of life begins to acknowledge His rightful place.
The heart that once defended its own righteousness learns to confess its need for mercy.
The person who once lived primarily for self-interest begins to discover a different direction through the grace of Christ.
Repentance is therefore not opposed to grace. It is a fitting response to the grace that calls us back to God.
And the change it brings does not remain confined to religious language or inward feeling.
It begins to shape ordinary decisions.
We learn to recognize the kindness we have received rather than assuming that others owe it to us.
We choose truth over convenient excuses.
We become more willing to acknowledge our mistakes and less eager to expose the failures of others.
We resist the temptation to treat people as instruments of our ambitions.
These actions do not earn salvation. They are the fruit of a life being redirected by God's grace.
A sincere expression of gratitude, a difficult admission of wrongdoing, or an act of mercy toward someone we would rather ignore may seem insignificant.
Yet such choices reveal that something fundamental is changing within us.
The grace of God does not merely offer relief from guilt. It calls us into a new way of living.
Thus, the painful recognition of sin need not end in despair.
In Jesus Christ, it can become the beginning of repentance, reconciliation, and transformation.
Who Occupies the Highest Place in Our Hearts?
Standing before Rodin's The Thinker, we might wonder what occupies the mind of someone so deeply absorbed in thought.
Standing before the words of Romans, however, we are led to an even more searching question: Toward whom are our thoughts ultimately directed?
Human beings possess a remarkable ability to explain themselves.
We can justify our decisions, defend our intentions, and construct persuasive arguments for the way we live.
Yet the more skillfully we explain ourselves, the easier it can become to avoid examining the desires beneath those explanations.
Romans 1 confronts us with a truth we would often prefer to overlook.
The deepest problem of human sin is not merely that we occasionally make wrong choices. It is that we repeatedly seek to place ourselves where God alone belongs.
We want to determine what is good without submitting to His truth.
We want to enjoy His gifts without acknowledging the Giver.
We want freedom without accountability, blessings without gratitude, and moral certainty without the humility to examine ourselves.
But the gospel invites us into a different relationship with God.
It calls us to surrender the illusion of self-sufficiency and to receive the grace revealed in Jesus Christ.
God's wrath exposes the reality of sin, while His mercy opens the way to forgiveness and new life.
The purpose of confronting our sin is not to remain overwhelmed by guilt, but to discover the Savior who meets us in our need.
Ultimately, the question is not whether we can produce convincing explanations for every decision we have made.
It is whether our lives are being directed by the truth of God or by the desires we have elevated above Him.
What occupies the highest place in my heart today—and am I truly willing to surrender that place to God?
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.
