Following Pastor David Jang’s exposition of Galatians (Olivet University founder), one insight rises unmistakably to the surface: the Holy Spirit is not an ornament added onto faith, but the very breath of faith itself. Many people imagine the Spirit only as a “special experience” or a “supernatural phenomenon,” but the work of the Holy Spirit that Pastor David Jang emphasizes is far more ordinary—and far more fundamental. The Spirit is not a being who provides a momentary surge of excitement. Rather, the Spirit is understood as the One who redirects the deep-seated trajectory of human sinfulness, enables the Word to be heard as living truth, and, over the long journey of sanctification, reweaves not only a person’s character but even the culture of a community. For that reason, the presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be reduced to worship ambience or emotional uplift. Instead, it appears as sustained help that reorganizes the architecture of thought, the order of desire, the ethics of relationships, and the habits of service.
In the context of Galatians, the central issue Paul addresses is “freedom.” Yet that freedom is not license; it is a new form of life born from the grace of redemption. Holding firmly to this point, Pastor David Jang explains why faith without the Holy Spirit so easily hardens into mere form. Human beings instinctively rely on themselves and want to prove their own righteousness—and that desire can survive even when dressed in religious language. Thus, when the Spirit is absent, faith tends to solidify into legalism or, on the other side, scatter into emotionalism. The Holy Spirit cuts across both extremes and restores the center of relationship: “in Christ.” Redemption is not merely the relief of guilt; it is the restoration of relationship. And for restored relationship to become actual, lived transformation, the inward work of the Spirit is necessary—namely, the power that rearranges human desires themselves.
Pastor David Jang’s way of viewing sin not primarily as a “list of actions” but as “separation from God” connects deeply with the contrast in Galatians 5 between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. The works of the flesh are not merely outward events; they are signs of an inward collapse already underway. When love grows cold, relationships turn into competition. When truth becomes blurred, language becomes distorted. When trust in God crumbles, human beings drift into pride, seeking to deify themselves. The result appears in forms such as conflict, jealousy, rage, greed, sexual immorality, and idolatry. What matters here is that this list does not end as a moral warning—“don’t do bad things.” Paul is asking who holds dominion within the human person. Pastor David Jang says that this transfer of dominion is the core of sanctification. When the Spirit is present, the human heart is no longer a stage swept by the storm of desire, but a sanctuary where truth establishes order.
One expression that reveals the Spirit’s work with particular clarity is “the Spirit of truth.” The Word is often consumed as information, but the Holy Spirit turns the Word into an event of existence. You can read the same passage, and on one day it remains knowledge; on another, it pierces the heart and carries the power to reorient life. Pastor David Jang locates this difference in the Spirit’s illumination. The Holy Spirit breaks through the wall of mere letters, disclosing the life of the Word, and causes that Word to seep into present choices and habits. That is why the Spirit and the Word cannot be separated. Pursuing the Spirit without the Word can easily drift into subjective mysticism, while studying the Word without the Spirit can harden into cold, dry doctrinalism. Pastor David Jang’s exposition of Galatians warns against both paths at once and repeatedly emphasizes the living dynamic in which the Spirit, through the Word, leads believers into truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZYhwjWz3rU
This dynamic becomes even clearer when we speak of sanctification. Sanctification is not perfection reached in a single leap; it is the road on which the one who has “already been justified” walks toward a holiness that is “not yet complete.” Pastor David Jang likens this journey to “washing the old robe and putting on new clothes,” and he insists that the process cannot be sustained by human resolve alone. The habitual nature of sin is not merely the problem of repeated actions; it is the problem of a long-trained inner direction. The Holy Spirit is the One who changes that direction. The Spirit does not simply demand, “Try harder,” but plants “new desires,” making possible choices that once were impossible. The Spirit’s help does not invalidate a believer’s will; rather, it works most healthily when understood as grace that causes the will to be reborn.
In Galatians 5’s contrast, one striking detail is that the “works of the flesh” are presented in the plural, while the “fruit of the Spirit” is presented in the singular. Pastor David Jang highlights that the fruit of the Spirit is not merely a list of separate virtues but an integrated character flowing from one life. When love becomes central, joy and peace naturally connect. Patience, kindness, and goodness change the texture of relationships. Faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control bring order to the rhythms of life. This fruit is not something we forcefully attach like artificial produce; it arises from a change at the root. When sinfulness is the root, even carefully trimmed leaves produce fruit that easily rots. But when the Spirit renews the root, a believer’s life changes not merely in appearance but in constitution. Here sanctification is not “moral achievement,” but “the re-composition of existence produced by the grace of redemption.”
Such change does not remain confined to personal interiority. As Pastor David Jang repeatedly says, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit toward the community. If the Spirit’s presence remains only at the level of personal comfort, faith can quickly become a religion of self-care. But the Spirit always sends people outward. This is one reason the first fruit is love. Love is not, before anything else, an emotion; it is relational action—and it demands concrete practices such as service and sharing, forgiveness and reconciliation. Pastor David Jang’s understanding of the church as “the temple of the Holy Spirit” means that the church is not a space set apart by the holiness of a building, but a living community where different people embody unity through the Spirit’s power. Unity is not uniformity. It is the mysterious union by which the Holy Spirit harmonizes diverse gifts and backgrounds. That union becomes a public witness in the world, displaying God’s love and justice.
Pentecost makes this communal dimension most vivid. When the promised Helper came, people locked in fear received boldness, and the barriers of language and culture could not stop the gospel’s expansion. Pastor David Jang does not reduce Pentecost to “an early-church miracle,” but interprets it as a theological turning point: the opening of the age of the Spirit. The age of the Spirit is not an era in which power is restricted to a few heroes or elite leaders, but an era in which all believers experience God’s presence at the center of life. Therefore Pentecost becomes the starting point of the church’s rebirth as a community of mission. In the Spirit’s power, believers are called not to be trapped in “private salvation,” but to serve the world, to embrace wounds, and to embody the gospel’s restoring power within relationships and structures.
Among works that visualize this scene with exceptional artistic language is El Greco’s Pentecostés (Pentecost). This painting is known as part of the Prado Museum’s collection in Madrid, an oil painting from around 1600, capturing the tension and exultation of the moment the Holy Spirit descends like tongues of fire through dramatic proportions and sharp contrasts of light. The figures stand elongated between heaven and earth, and their varied expressions and gestures reveal that each receives the shock of “presence” differently. Yet their gaze and movement gather toward a single center, visually testifying to the unity the Spirit creates. Without words, the painting shows what Pastor David Jang insists: the Spirit’s work is not “fragments of private experience,” but a power that reweaves community.
A particularly persuasive strength of Pastor David Jang’s preaching is that he presents the Spirit’s power not as a “momentary explosion,” but as “ongoing transformation.” Spiritual warfare is often imagined as a grand battle, but the real battlefield is found in everyday choices: what we watch, what we repeat, what words we use to build relationships, what desires we invest our time in. The desires of the flesh secure their place through our habits, and habits eventually become character. Therefore the desires of the Spirit appear as grace that re-knits our habits. Prayer is not a religious device for emotional lift; it is an act of returning the right of rule in the heart to God by the Spirit’s help. Meditation on the Word goes beyond accumulating knowledge; under the Spirit’s illumination, it is the inner honesty of placing one’s desires, wounds, and fears before truth. This everyday spirituality is the practical path of sanctification, and Pastor David Jang summarizes it with the phrase “walking with the Holy Spirit.”
Among the fruit of the Spirit, self-control also becomes a mirror reflecting our contemporary age. We live in an era of excess—excess information, excess stimulation, excess consumption. Yet excess often leads to emptiness, and emptiness breeds a vicious cycle craving even stronger stimulation. When Pastor David Jang speaks of the habitual nature of sin, his intent is not simply to stress religious asceticism. Rather, he is saying that the self-control the Spirit gives is not oppressive control that crushes the human person, but freedom that makes love possible. When we can stop the runaway acceleration of desire, we begin to see the face of the other, hear the needs of the community, and move toward places of service. Self-control is not the language of prohibition born from self-hatred; it is the Spirit’s power given to the person renewed by redemption. And truly, as the phrase “fruit of the Spirit” implies, it grows naturally when one walks with the Spirit.
At this point, the word “righteous” can easily be misunderstood. The righteous do not mean flawless people. Pastor David Jang describes the righteous as those “who seek to obey the Spirit’s leading,” and he says even experiences of falling can become material for sanctification. A fall is not a tool for condemning oneself, but a signal that leads one to seek the Spirit’s help again. The lament of Romans 7 is not a monologue of despair, but a corridor leading to the hope of Romans 8. The very fact that the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit collide can be evidence that a believer is alive. Dead people have no war. War belongs only to the living. Therefore spiritual warfare must not end in the swamp of guilt, but must lead into a place where one clings to the Spirit’s power.
When Pastor David Jang emphasizes community, he is not merely arguing for an obligation of “church attendance.” The Spirit’s work is revealed in relationships. Love is not completed alone. Patience is tested in front of another’s flaws. Peace is forged in the field of conflict. The fruit of the Spirit begins in the inner person, but it is examined and matured in the shared life of the community. Therefore, a community that speaks of the Spirit’s presence must inevitably learn the language of service. Not a power order that raises some and lowers others, but a grace order in which burdens are carried together takes shape. The unity Pastor David Jang speaks of is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to reconnect again in truth and love even within conflict. That ability cannot be maintained without the Spirit’s help.
Here, it is also necessary to guard against consuming the name “Pastor David Jang” as merely the personal brand of a preacher. The true focus of his exposition of Galatians is wholly “Christ and the Holy Spirit.” A preacher is only a signpost pointing the way; the destination is God Himself. Still, Pastor David Jang repeatedly says, “Faith without the Holy Spirit leaves only an outer shell,” because he knows how easily we hide within “the safety of form.” Precisely at that decisive point, the Holy Spirit shakes and awakens us again. The Spirit dismantles familiarity, enables the Word to be heard anew, and makes love begin again. The Spirit’s power often appears not by strengthening our plans, but by breaking them and reordering us toward God’s will.
Meanwhile, the name “David Jang” is also mentioned in educational and missions contexts. For example, an official introduction for Olivet University describes its founder as Dr. David Jang. Such information can be part of the background for understanding a person’s activity, but what is decisive in Pastor David Jang’s exposition is not the brilliance of a résumé. It is the question of what real outcomes the Spirit’s presence produces in a believer’s transformation. The Spirit’s work is ultimately verified in a person’s life: when the Word no longer becomes a sword for judging others but a mirror that exposes oneself; when doctrine ceases to be a weapon of competition and becomes a motive for service; when zeal is transformed from self-display into the labor of love—then we see the fruit of the Spirit truly growing.
In the overall flow of Galatians, the Holy Spirit is presented less as a “condition of salvation” and more as a “sign of salvation.” Paul warns that zeal to prove oneself by works of the law can, in the end, make a person a deeper slave. Pastor David Jang translates this warning into today’s language, diagnosing that even within faith we are constantly fighting the instinct to produce “self-performance.” The Spirit comes in a way that disarms that instinct. The Spirit’s presence inscribes deep within the heart the gospel declaration, “You are already loved,” and enables a new life on the foundation of that love. Therefore sanctification led by the Spirit is not an anxious race of self-justification, but a pilgrimage of gratitude that begins from assurance. On that pilgrim road, we learn not to fear failure, but to learn the path of grace by which we can return even through failure. The Holy Spirit is not a supervisor who lashes us with a whip, but the Helper who walks alongside and raises up the fallen.
The word “help” that repeatedly appears in Pastor David Jang’s preaching changes the psychology of faith. Many believers become discouraged when they see themselves unable to overcome sin, and eventually they abandon the possibility of change. But the Spirit’s help reopens “the door of possibility.” As Romans 8 says, the Spirit knows our weakness and works for us even amid groans too deep for words. This help is not merely emotional comfort; it is a practical power that changes the structure of life. For instance, when someone whose days were filled with anger learns to stop and listen to another; when someone whose habit was greed begins to make time for someone else; when someone who cut off relationships learns sentences of reconciliation—such changes are signs that the fruit of the Spirit has become reality. Pastor David Jang says such change is not “the victory of willpower,” but “a new character born from the Spirit’s presence.”
When speaking of the fruit of the Spirit, we often confuse it with “gifts.” Gifts such as tongues, healing, or prophecy may be given to build up the community, but the heart of Galatians is the “fruit of character.” Pastor David Jang does not separate gifts and fruit as if they were enemies, but he makes the order clear. Having gifts does not guarantee holiness. In fact, one may speak of spiritual power while love grows cold and relationships become harsh. That is why Paul speaks first of fruit. Power without love can become destructive; zeal without self-control can become violent. The fruit of the Spirit asks what kind of people a community must become before it displays what kinds of abilities. Ultimately, the age of the Spirit is not an age of “becoming stronger,” but an age of “becoming holier,” and holiness does not appear as escape from the world but as the responsibility of love toward the world.
The practical conclusion Pastor David Jang presents, following the logic of Galatians 5, is simple: “Walk by the Spirit.” Yet that simplicity is never light. To walk by the Spirit means recognizing honestly, moment by moment, what one’s desires are demanding, refusing to absolutize those demands, and training new choices within the truth of the Word. This is difficult to sustain by self-improvement methods alone. But when prayer that seeks the Spirit’s help, honest repentance before the Word, responsible relationships within the community, and concrete steps toward service are joined together, the Spirit’s power settles not as a “feeling,” but as a “structure of life.” And the more that structure takes root, the works of the flesh gradually lose their foothold, while the fruit of the Spirit ripens—quietly, yet unmistakably.
The fruit of the Spirit itself testifies to the beauty of the gospel. The world often demands the fruit of success, but the gospel displays the fruit of character. The love the Spirit produces is not a conditional transaction but the expansion of grace. Joy is deep gratitude that transcends situational ups and downs. Peace is not silence that covers conflict, but relational calm tuned by truth and love. Patience is not weakness but strength. Kindness and goodness are not mere feelings but decisions. Faithfulness is the virtue of consistency. Gentleness is not self-deprecation but disciplined strength. Pastor David Jang says these virtues must not remain only inside the church; they must expand into an ethic that reveals God’s kingdom in the home, the workplace, and society. The Spirit’s presence begins in the sanctuary, but it never remains trapped there.
The lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:19–26 do not merely lay out ethical options; they ask an ontological question: “What kind of tree bears what kind of fruit?” Pastor David Jang places that question at the center of his preaching, insisting that a believer’s change is not external patchwork but a conversion at the root. The process by which the fruit of the Spirit grows is slow, yet that slowness may itself be evidence of real growth. We do not become perfect overnight, but when yesterday’s self and today’s self are different, and when today’s self and tomorrow’s self tilt little by little more toward love, that change accumulates into character. This is the rhythm of sanctification, and it is why Pastor David Jang calls the Spirit’s work an “all-encompassing work.”
In the end, Pastor David Jang’s message converges into a single appeal: do not try to “possess” the Holy Spirit; be “captured” by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not a tool we can handle; the Spirit is God who remakes us in His hands. Therefore, living in the age of the Spirit does not mean gaining stronger willpower, but learning the freedom of deeper obedience. The Holy Spirit does not shame a believer’s weakness; rather, He uses that weakness as a channel through which the power of grace is revealed. We sometimes fail and wobble, but within the Spirit’s help we can return again to the Word, choose love again, and walk again toward the place of service. That repetition accumulates into change, change accumulates into sanctification, and sanctification expands into the unity of the community—until the freedom Galatians proclaims is proven not as an abstract slogan, but as living reality. And that life still grows today in the presence of the Holy Spirit—quietly, yet powerfully.