In El Greco’s The Penitent Saint Peter, tears flow, yet Peter’s gaze never leaves heaven. Looking at his face, we are led to consider not so much the depth of his remorse as the direction in which he turns. In his sermon on John 13, Pastor David Jang, founder of Olivet University in the United States, locates the difference between Peter and Judas less in the magnitude of their sins than in their willingness to receive the Lord’s love. Their stories ask whether those who recognize their sin will remain trapped in self-condemnation or draw near to the grace that washes them clean.
In the Wake of Betrayal, Repentance Turns Toward Love
Peter denied Jesus three times, and Judas betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. We cannot grasp the heart of this contrast by treating one man’s wrongdoing lightly while emphasizing only the gravity of the other’s. The sermon draws attention to the fact that both men betrayed the Lord, yet Peter returned in repentance, while Judas did not. What made the difference in restoration was not the ability to avoid failure, but a faith that knew and held fast to the love that would receive him even in failure. As we consider Peter’s repentance, neither the seriousness of sin nor the power of forgiveness should be lost from view.
Judas, too, felt the anguish of recognizing the sin he had committed. But knowing the weight of sin is not the same as coming to the one who can forgive it. If remorse leaves us doing nothing but passing judgment on ourselves again and again, guilt can become a wall that hides the way home. Repentance is not a matter of minimizing the weight of sin, but of bringing that weight, without hiding it, before the Lord’s love. Peter’s return did not erase his betrayal, but neither did he allow that betrayal to have the final word over his life.
The sermon warns against Satan’s scheme of whispering to those who have sinned that they can no longer be forgiven. Harsh self-reproach does not always signify deep repentance. We can spend all our strength hating ourselves while postponing the very act of entrusting ourselves to the Lord. The theological insight here is that we must fully acknowledge our sin while also looking to the Lord’s love. A heart that returns to the Lord holds together the honesty to grieve its wrongdoing and the hope that trusts him to forgive.
Even a Heart Born Anew Needs the Grace of Cleansing
Where, then, was the faith that enabled Peter to return rooted? The passage turns our gaze to Jesus as he washes his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. Peter initially refuses to be washed. But when he hears that he can have no part with the Lord unless the Lord washes him, he asks to have his whole body washed. Jesus replies that those who have already bathed need only to have their feet washed.
The sermon interprets this bathing as regeneration—that is, being born again, dying and rising to new life through the Lord’s grace. Because Peter had experienced a fundamental cleansing through Jesus’ words and love, he could remember that love even after his collapse. The washing of feet is both a model of humble service and a sign of the redemption that cleanses sinners. When we receive the Lord who washes us, faith takes on a depth quite different from the effort to improve outward appearances. Grace is not a reward sinners encounter after making themselves clean; it is the Lord’s touch that makes sinners clean.
In this sense, the contrast between the two disciples is a mirror held up to the community of faith before it is a warning directed at those outside the church. Attendance at worship and dedication to service do not, by themselves, prove that the heart has been renewed at its core. We may seem to remain close to the Lord while placing our own ideas and interests first in the choices we actually make. Rather than judging whether others have been born again, readers are invited to examine whether they themselves are truly receiving the Lord’s love.
Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John 3—that we must be born of water and the Spirit—also illuminate this foundation. The sermon sees in the cleansing of water both judgment against sin and the resolve to repent, and in the Spirit’s work the power to renew the deepest places of the soul. Taking sin seriously is necessary, but human will alone cannot transform the heart at its roots. As we come to understand and receive Christ’s love under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, faith moves beyond knowing doctrine to actually living a renewed life.
To have already bathed does not mean that the steps we take afterward will never gather dirt. Those who have been born again still have weaknesses and need the washing of feet that brings the sins of daily life before the Lord. To cover over today’s wrongdoing simply because we remember the grace we received in the past is to turn the meaning of cleansing upside down. The assurance that we are loved is not an excuse to conceal sin, but a source of courage to stop hiding and return.
At the Cross, Faith Lays Down Its Excuses
At the heart of the way back stands the cross of Jesus Christ. The foundations of faith emphasized by Pastor David Jang are the cross, the resurrection, and regeneration through the Holy Spirit. The hope of forgiveness rests not on thoughts with which we comfort ourselves, but on the gospel that the Lord has atoned for our sins. If we seek only the joy of resurrection without passing through the cross, we can easily miss the call to deny ourselves and live anew.
In Galatians 2:20, Paul declares that he has been crucified with Christ and that Christ now lives in him. In light of this confession, faith cannot be a matter of adding religious achievements to an unchanged self. What we must relinquish is not merely a few habits that make us look imperfect to others, but the self-righteousness and stubbornness that insist, to the very end, that we are right. The regeneration described in the sermon goes beyond accumulating knowledge about Jesus; it is a transformation in which he becomes Lord over the way we actually live.
Even the memory of a once-powerful experience of grace cannot replace seeking the Spirit’s guidance today. As the years of faith accumulate, familiar worship and busy ministry can conceal inner dryness. Time spent humbling ourselves through Scripture and prayer is not primarily preparation for greater religious achievements; it is time to offer the Lord a heart we cannot change by our own strength. To long for the work of the Holy Spirit is to step away from putting our own ideas and interests first and entrust ourselves to him so that we may follow his will.
Repentance, then, is not a secondary matter in the life of faith that can be postponed until later. Afraid that acknowledging wrongdoing will undermine the reputation or authority we have built, we may offer lengthy explanations and excuses instead of confession. Yet the first words we need before the Lord are not an account of why we had no other choice, but a plea for mercy because we have sinned. Immediate repentance is the first step of laying down pride and turning back as soon as we recognize our sin, rather than waiting until all our feelings have settled.
That turning also involves a resolve not to return to the same sin. If, after grieving and confessing, we walk the same path without concern, repentance remains mere words that have failed to change the direction of our lives. We examine ourselves daily and seek the Spirit’s help because we do not want to treat forgiveness lightly. Scripture and prayer are not ornaments that disguise the limits of our willpower; they are where we recognize sin and receive strength to obey the Lord’s will.
The Hope of Restoration Takes Shape in Caring Hands
As personal repentance deepens, we begin to see the place of community in a new light. When we hide our sin alone and pass judgment on ourselves alone, it can become harder to bring our failures into the open and return. The sermon emphasizes spiritual fellowship in which believers pray for one another, confess their sins, and offer loving counsel. A community of faith must not be a place where sin is dismissed as unimportant, but a place where sin is addressed in grace and people are helped to walk again.
How we listen to another person’s confession reveals how we understand the forgiveness we ourselves have received. If we seek forgiveness for ourselves while allowing no possibility of restoration for someone else who has stumbled, the grace we have received fails to reach our neighbors. Praying together and offering loving counsel do not take the place of that person’s own repentance. They mean staying beside someone so that the steps of abandoning sin and returning to the Lord do not have to be taken alone. Within such care, confession moves beyond the silence borne in isolation and becomes a shared prayer for restoration.
The fruit of the gospel of the cross, as Pastor David Jang describes it, does not end with the relief of knowing we have been forgiven. The charge given to Peter after his repentance and return—“Feed my sheep”—shows how restoration leads to a life of caring for others. A person who receives love grows into someone who passes that love on to their neighbors. The Lord’s hands, which washed the disciples’ feet, do more than cleanse us; they also show us whom we should reach out to in our own lives.
Reflecting on Peter and Judas through Scripture is not simply a matter of judging, from a distance, how their stories ended. It leads us to ask whether there is wrongdoing we have not yet confessed, stubbornness we have not relinquished, or some area of life in which we are still postponing repentance. Those who entrust their feet to the Lord deny neither their uncleanness nor the love that washes it away. Today, am I merely repeating accusations against myself, or am I taking a step back toward the Lord who washes me clean?
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.
