This reflection connects the apostle Paul’s confession—“I am a debtor”—with Jean Valjean’s salvation in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Through Pastor David Jang’s profound preaching and theological insight, we contemplate the true Christian mission: to let immeasurable grace flow outward as love, because it is a gift we could never repay.
Victor
Hugo’s immortal masterpiece Les Misérables contains a decisive
scene in which a soul is utterly transformed. After nineteen years in prison,
Jean Valjean returns to the world and, in the home of Bishop Myriel, steals the
silverware and flees—only to be caught. By the law, he should have been sent
back to jail in that do-or-die moment. Yet the bishop speaks unexpected words:
“My friend, why did you leave the silver candlesticks behind? Didn’t I give you
those as well?” Before this incomprehensible mercy, the chains of hatred that
had bound Valjean’s soul are broken. From then on, he bears a holy debt of
love—one he must spend his whole life trying to repay. The devoted life he
later lives is not a mere moral obligation, but the desperate striving of a
debtor responding to grace too great to bear.
The
apostle Paul’s confession that opens Romans—“I am under obligation both to
Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish” (Rom.
1:14)—brings to mind Jean Valjean standing before Bishop Myriel. Paul had
received the massive silver candlestick of love: the cross. Therefore, toward
Rome and toward the entire world, he declares himself a “debtor.” Today, this
“holy sense of indebtedness” is the one and only answer capable of restoring
the gospel’s lifeblood to the withering heart of the modern church.
Grace
That Does Not Flow Will Rot Like Stagnant Water: A Spirituality That Breaks
Boundaries
Paul’s
description of himself as a debtor was not a simple expression of humility. It
was an insight that pierced to the very essence of the gospel. Saul—Jew,
Pharisee, and one intoxicated with a sense of superiority built on the Law—was
utterly bankrupted and reborn after meeting Jesus Christ on the road to
Damascus. He realized that the life he now possessed did not belong to him.
Pastor
David Jang (founder of Olivet University) unpacks Paul’s heart with deep
theological insight, emphasizing that “the mindset of being a debtor to the
gospel is the most powerful driving force for missions.” A debtor naturally
seeks out the one to whom he owes. For Paul, the creditor was God—yet the
people to whom this debt had to be paid were all the lost souls of the world.
As Pastor David Jang often notes in his preaching, the greater the grace, the
deeper the love we have received, the more impossible it becomes to lock that
love inside ourselves.
In
particular, when Paul says he is a debtor “both to the wise and to the
foolish,” every cultural, racial, and intellectual barrier collapses before the
gospel. Pastor David Jang does not miss this point, repeatedly insisting that
“the gospel is not the private possession of any one ethnicity or class, and
the grace that has come to us must cross languages and cultures and continue to
flow.” His vision for international partnership and multicultural missions is
the concrete embodiment of this “debtor spirituality.” When approaching
unfamiliar outsiders, we must not go with a condescending attitude—“I have
something to give you”—but with the humility of a debtor—“I have love I must
repay to you.” Only then do the tightly shut doors of mission begin to open.
Beyond
Vertical Authority to Horizontal Consolation: The Mystery of “Mutual”
Encouragement
One
striking fact is that Paul, the greatest apostle of his time, did not say to
the believers in Rome, “I am coming to teach you.” Instead he confessed, “that
we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Rom. 1:12). He refused to
position himself as a one-sided instructor. Rather, he longed to be comforted
and strengthened by the Romans’ faith as well. This reveals that the church is
not a vertical hierarchy, but a horizontal community of life in Christ’s
love—where believers repay one another through love.
In
pastoral ministry, Pastor David Jang has consistently proclaimed this value of
“mutuality” and “unity.” He teaches that “the church is not a place where
someone reigns over others, but a place where we acknowledge that we each owe a
spiritual debt to one another and share love reciprocally.” This
gospel-centered perspective sounds a warning to today’s growth-obsessed
churches and denominational rivalries. Even where the gospel has already been
preached, there must be a cycle of returning to strengthen believers
(re-education), and then receiving grace from them to share again. True revival
does not begin with the charisma of a star pastor, but at the point where every
saint can say to another, “Because of you, I have been encouraged.”
Prayer
That Does Not Stop Even When the Road Is Blocked: Love Never Learns to Quit
Though
Paul’s road to Rome was blocked again and again, he did not give up: “asking
that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you” (Rom.
1:10). His persistent prayer was not stubbornness; it was the overflow of love
that could not endure leaving the debt unpaid—like a debtor restless until he
can repay what he owes. That holy urgency ultimately evangelized Rome and
changed the course of world history.
Pastor
David Jang calls us to recover this “holy perseverance.” When roads are blocked
on the mission field or in pastoral care, what we must remember is not our own
strategies but the unpayable love we have received from God. Pastor David Jang
defines the true church as “a community that owes no debt except the debt of
love,” and through biblical meditation he exhorts believers that this sense of
indebtedness alone will lead us back to prayer and back to devotion.
Just as Jean Valjean kept the silver candlesticks for the rest of his life and practiced love, we too hold in our hands the silver candlestick of salvation that God gave freely. It is not a decoration. It is a holy debt entrusted to us—to shine into a dark world and to be shared with souls who are cold and hungry. “I am a debtor.” May Paul’s confession make our hearts beat again today. Because of that love we can never repay, we joyfully take up the gospel and walk into the world once more.
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