John 21 may look like an "added ending" to the Gospel of John, but in truth it is the most down-to-earth epilogue showing how resurrection faith reorders life and community. Even after the "purpose of writing" is clearly declared in John 20, the reason John 21 still remains is to reveal that the resurrection is not merely a doctrinal conclusion; it is the starting point that newly aligns the disciples' everyday reality and the church's direction. Pastor David Jang (founder of Olivet University) does not reduce this chapter to a private recovery story for Peter. He reads John 21 as a "direction of faith" text-one that discloses the coordinates by which a post-resurrection community must navigate, and the power that makes such navigation possible. The risen Jesus does not remain at the level of explaining the disciples' failures. He opens a path right in the middle of failure, and compresses the destination of that path into a single sentence: "Follow me." Therefore, John 21 is the last chapter of John and, at the same time, can be read like the first chapter of the church.
The scene that begins at the Sea of Galilee is intentionally ordinary. The stage for the miracle is not the temple, the synagogue, or a city square, but the livelihood field where all-night labor repeats itself. The fact that the disciples-including Peter-returned to the nets and the boat may not be sheer unbelief as much as the natural movement of a disoriented soul, relocating the body in the language of habit. Pastor David Jang focuses precisely on this point: a state where there is "zeal" but the "direction" has grown blurry-a diligent yet hollow night. They cast the net all night and catch nothing. In John's symbolic language, night often shines a light on a lack of discernment, fear, and human self-centered calculation. Even after the resurrection, the disciples can still be trapped in the rhythm of darkness. Yet at dawn, at the hour when light spreads, Jesus stands on the shore. This contrast engraves the meaning of resurrection into the senses. The resurrection is not a romantic declaration that denies darkness; it is a practical power that pierces the materiality of darkness and opens a new morning.
Jesus asks, "Children, do you have any fish?" The question is not an interrogating cross-examination, but an invitation for the disciples to speak honestly about their reality. "No." In that short confession lives limitation, emptiness, frustration, and a loss of direction. Pastor David Jang finds the first step of faith not in showing off what we "have," but in confessing what we "do not have." When self-certainty collapses, space finally opens for the certainty of the Word to enter. Jesus immediately says, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat." The command can sound like technical advice, but its essence is not a change of location; it is a directional turn into obedience. The disciples worked hard all night in the same way. Yet one sentence at dawn moves their labor into another dimension. The net fills to bursting, yet it does not tear. Abundance and preservation, expansion and unity occur at the same time.
Pastor David Jang interprets this net full of fish as a forceful metaphor for the direction of faith. Sometimes the cause of failure is not a lack of effort but a mismatch in direction. The habit of trying to solve life solely by "trying harder" exhausts faith; but Jesus' word makes us ask again, "Toward where will you cast?" In Christian life, direction is ultimately the direction of relationship. Whose voice do you listen to? Whose will becomes your standard of choice? What do you call "success"? These define the direction of faith. The miracle of John 21 is not simply an increase in fish; it is the event in which the risen Lord steps into the center of the disciples' reality and requests: "Make your relationship with me the central axis." When the net is cast toward the direction where the Lord stands-when life's orbit is adjusted to the Lord's word-the fruit exceeds what human calculation expected. As Pastor David Jang repeatedly emphasizes in his sermons on John 21, faith is, before it is a "race of effort," a "directional obedience."
This miracle also holds deep meaning within the wider biblical narrative. Just as Jesus began the disciples' calling early in his ministry using the language of nets and fish, so after the resurrection he calls them again through the same language. Pastor David Jang describes this as a "rekindling of vocation." The resurrection is not a power that erases the past; it is a power that revives the calling once given-now on a deeper love and a more accurate direction. For Peter, the resurrection is not a second chance that merely repeats the old; it is the first chance of a relationship whose depth has changed. A person who has passed through failure does not return to the same place in the same way. It may look like the same sea, the same net, the same boat, but now the central axis is clear: the Word.
It is also striking that the text records the specific number "153 fish." Church tradition has interpreted this number through various symbols, but above all this detail prevents the miracle from fading into a vague emotional impression; it anchors it in the weight of reality. Resurrection faith is not a conceptual excitement. It comes with fruit and responsibility clear enough to be counted. The net was full, and the disciples had to haul the weight together. Abundance is blessing, but it is also vocation that requires communal labor. This is why Pastor David Jang speaks of the church's mission in a way that refuses to separate "fruit" from "calling." Grace gives us rest, but at the same time it sets us moving together. The power of the resurrection is the power that makes us move not as solo players, but as the body of a community.
The moment when the beloved disciple says, "It is the Lord," is also crucial. It is not abundant results that make the disciples recognize the Lord; it is the eyes that recognize the Lord that reinterpret the results anew. Faith is not an act of rationalizing God by "inferring" him from miracles; it is a transformation of perception-"recognizing" God so that daily events are rearranged around him. Peter puts on his outer garment and plunges into the sea. His movement carries passion, but also a decision: he will no longer avoid the past he must face. Here Pastor David Jang describes resurrection power as "the power that transforms memory." We cannot change the past, but the risen Lord can change how the past defines us. Resurrection breaks the chain of guilt, yet it does not drop the thread of responsibility. That is the Lord's way.
The charcoal fire on the shore evokes the charcoal fire of John 18. The cold memory of Peter denying Jesus three times reappears after the resurrection as the background of a warm breakfast table. Jesus does not delete failure. Instead, he changes the place of failure into the place of restoration. "Come and have breakfast." The invitation comes before the sermon. The risen Lord first feeds the community, restores the relationship, and only then entrusts a mission. The bread and fish already prepared recall the feeding in John 6, hinting that the church's life ultimately grows on the rhythms of Word and table, care and fellowship. This is why "care" never disappears from Pastor David Jang's understanding of the church's mission: the post-resurrection community begins precisely in the grace of this table. Before the church builds a big stage, it must first learn how to seat the wounded and feed them.
Then comes the threefold question: "Do you love me?" This is not a trial that corners Peter, but covenant language that resets the relationship. Pastor David Jang sees here the heart of discipleship not as "competence" but as the "truthfulness of love." Jesus turns love into mission by saying, "If you love me, feed my sheep." Love is not the elevation of emotion; it is translated into responsibility to nourish and guard others. When the church speaks of resurrection power, its most concrete form is "care," and its most biblical authority is "the strength to feed the sheep." This scene redefines the qualifications for leadership. The ground of authority to care for the community is not charisma or achievement, but love for the Lord.
There is no need to exaggerate the difference in the Greek vocabulary for love, yet at least one thing is clear: Jesus' questions are not designed to "measure" Peter's love. They draw Peter into honest confession at his true level, and on that honest confession Jesus builds a mission. When Peter says, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you," he no longer stands on his own righteousness, but on the Lord's knowing-on the Lord's insight and grace. Pastor David Jang warns that when the language of faith pursues only beauty, it can miss truth. The Lord leads us into deeper love not through overblown confessions, but through truthful ones. Thus restoration is not the release of emotion; it is an event in which the direction and responsibility of life are rebuilt. As the confession of love is repeated, Peter's gaze moves from his failure to the Lord's face-and that movement itself becomes a turning of direction.
Interestingly, Jesus does not tell Peter only to "gather people with a net," but also to "feed sheep." This shift brings balance to the church's understanding of mission. If the net symbolizes expansion and evangelism, feeding sheep symbolizes formation, care, and sustained spiritual growth. Pastor David Jang emphasizes that John 21 neither reduces the church to a mere evangelistic organization nor confines it to an inward-looking care community. The church must embrace people-and then feed those it has embraced. It must bear fruit-and yet preserve the net so that the fruit does not tear the community apart. When modern churches are easily captured by the language of performance and scale, John 21 holds us again with the symbol of "a net that does not tear." The more an era amplifies diversity and difference, the power that sustains the community is not programs but love. In Pastor David Jang's reading, resurrection power appears precisely as the elasticity of that love.
Jesus does not stop there, but foretells Peter's future: "You will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go." These words strip discipleship of romance and reveal the reality of the cross. Resurrection faith is not a pardon that avoids suffering; it is a sense of direction that prevents us from losing the way within suffering. Pastor David Jang stresses here that the church must not mistake resurrection power for triumphalism. Resurrection power does not mean a worldly victory competing with worldly power. Rather, resurrection power is an inner strength that crosses the order of fear and enables us to choose love to the very end. In the end, "Follow me" is not a whip that recalls past failure; it is a lamp that illuminates the road ahead. Post-resurrection discipleship is not a lighter life but a deeper life-and that depth includes the possibility of suffering. Yet the suffering becomes not destruction, but a form of testimony.
The moment Peter points to the beloved disciple and asks, "Lord, what about this man?" exposes a classic temptation that blurs the direction of faith. Comparison distorts the soul's compass and turns the community into a field of competition. Jesus' answer is firm: "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me." Pastor David Jang says this scene teaches the church to learn maturity that respects each person's calling. The resurrection community is not an organization that replicates identical talents; it is a body in which diverse callings are harmoniously connected around one Lord. John 21 also corrects a rumor about the beloved disciple by clarifying that Jesus did not say the disciple would not die. A community must stand not on rumor and speculation, but on testimony and truth. Another reason Pastor David Jang reads John 21 as the church's "new beginning" is that it rescues the church from the waves of sensational stories and establishes it on the solid foundation of "writing" and "witness." Our own era, too, can easily lose truth in a flood of information. Therefore John 21 calls the church to recover an "ethic of testimony": choose verified truth over exaggerated narratives, sustained obedience over impulsive excitement.
Seen this way, the "direction" of John 21 is not a mere moral lesson; it is an existential compass created by relationship with the risen Lord. We may move busily, but movement itself is not mission. Zeal is not identical to obedience. If direction is off, diligence becomes futility; if direction is aligned, small obedience becomes great fruit. The question Pastor David Jang repeatedly presses in his interpretation of John 21 is ultimately this: "Right now, whose word am I following, and toward where am I headed?" As this question grows sharper, faith moves from anxious self-justification into the peace of trusting the Lord. And this question does not remain only personal; it divides the identity of the whole church. What standards shape the church's decisions, what values hold the center, and what language the church uses to understand the world-these become "the direction of the net."
At this point, the resurrection theology emphasized by N. T. Wright expands the message of John 21 even further. Wright does not reduce the resurrection to a "ticket to escape to another world after death," but reads it as the declaration that God has already begun new creation. Therefore the resurrection is both a future comfort and a present vocation. The flow of the disciples returning to ordinary life and then moving back toward mission through the risen Jesus' call demonstrates that resurrection is not an escape route away from reality; it is the engine that renews reality. Pastor David Jang's understanding of resurrection power moves in the same direction. The resurrection is not a religious safe zone that isolates the church from the world; it is the propulsion that enables the church to live a way of life that is life-giving in the middle of the world. That is why John 21 asks, in today's workplace, home, relationships, and the complexity of the city: "In what way will you cast your net?" The "right side" is not ultimately geographical; it is an inner criterion. It appears in the decision to move from self-centered calculation to Word-centered obedience.
Pastor David Jang urges readers of this text to focus on "the place where the direction of the Word is given." The disciples, in the middle of the sea, gathered all their experience, yet the voice that taught them direction came from the shore. Human efforts to expand what we can control cannot break through certain limits, but the Lord's voice expands life into territories we cannot control. Thus John 21 teaches not so much "the secret of success" as it teaches "the place of listening." The Lord often speaks precisely when our familiar methods stop working. What we need then is not self-blame or resignation, but the wisdom of repentance that realigns direction. The repentance Pastor David Jang emphasizes does not end in tearful emotion; it becomes a concrete turning that changes the direction of real choices.
"Cast the net on the right side" translates into many forms in life today. For some, it is obedience that changes the way relationships are handled. For others, it is obedience that rearranges priorities at work. For still others, it is obedience that shifts ministry goals away from numbers and recognition toward care and formation. Pastor David Jang urges us to leave behind the habit of measuring faith by "how much we do," and instead to examine "how aligned we are to the Word." Word-centered alignment requires not a momentary impulse but sustained training: the habit of not consuming Scripture as mere knowledge but receiving it as life's standard; prayer that does not only pour out demands but learns to wait for the Lord's will in silence; humility that allows community counsel to correct personal bias. As such training accumulates, we begin to recognize the dawn voice more quickly even inside the fatigue of night.
The miracle of John 21 also redefines what the church's "mission" is. The abundance in the net does not simply signify external expansion. The net is not a tool for capturing people and holding them down; it is a relational structure that serves life. Pastor David Jang therefore argues that the church should not go out as if competing with the world to "pull people in," but should go out by transmitting Christ's life and caring for people in Christ's way. The command "Feed my sheep" shows that evangelistic passion must be joined to formative responsibility. In other words, the church must be skilled not only at invitation, but also at accompaniment. When there is a table that welcomes newcomers and a nourishment of the Word that sustains those who have walked long, the church takes on the shape of "a net that does not tear." This is the church's mission Pastor David Jang reads in John 21-the order of community sustained by resurrection power.
John 21 goes further and asks what texture "the power of the resurrection" takes in lived reality. Resurrection power is not the power of a show that overwhelms the world; it is the power of life that accumulates when small obediences are repeated. The breakfast scene at the charcoal fire shows how warm and personal that power is. Pastor David Jang even says that if the church speaks of resurrection while treating people coldly, it is not testifying to resurrection power but betraying it. The resurrection opens a path opposite to the logic of death that turns humans into tools; it presents a way of seeing people as God's image and raising them up again. Therefore, anyone who meditates on John 21 eventually arrives at one conclusion: resurrection power is not the force that makes us rougher; it is the force that makes us gentler-and yet, at the same time, bolder.
As an artistic emblem that visually compresses this message, one may recall Raphael's depiction, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes. In the scene, the disciples' gestures and gaze are drawn in a single direction, and that direction ultimately points not to the abundance of fish but to the Lord who commanded the miracle. The heaving sea, the instability of the boat, the disciples' bewilderment and awe-woven into a single moment-enable the viewer to feel the tremor of "the moment direction changes." The direction of faith Pastor David Jang emphasizes is precisely this rearrangement of vision: where the weight of life is leaning, what the community regards as most precious-these decide the direction of the net. Raphael's composition reminds us visually that abundance cannot replace the Lord; rather, abundance must lead us into reverence toward the Lord. Faith is not a religion that consumes results, but a relational path that recognizes the Lord more clearly through results.
If we gaze at Raphael's work in a meditative way, the miracle of the net full of fish in John 21 is revealed not merely as "a stunning scene," but as "training for the eyes." The disciples' hands are gripping the net, but their transformation begins earlier than their hands-it begins in their sight. In a culture that consumes instantly and seeks quick confirmation of outcomes, we often look at performance before we look at the Lord. Yet the center of Pastor David Jang's reading of John 21 is this: the confession "It is the Lord" comes first, and only when that confession is present do results become not the foundation of faith but the fruit of gratitude. Thus this text restores to the church the "way of seeing": seeing people not as numbers but as souls; seeing ministry not as tasks but as responses of love; seeing hardship not only as failure but as an opportunity to bear witness. Resurrection power is ultimately the power that gives new eyes-and those eyes deepen and widen the community.
For believers today, John 21 asks about the road after failure. In the season of failure, we want to return to familiar methods. But the risen Jesus does not merely say, "Try again." He says, "Cast in a different direction." Pastor David Jang says what is needed most in the time of failure is not a new technique but a spiritual sensitivity that discerns the Lord's voice. That sensitivity grows through meditation on the Word, prayer, listening within community, and the training of small obedience. And the question "Do you love me?" examines the motive of ministry. Activity without love wears people down and fractures the community; ministry that begins in love, even if it looks slow, ultimately gives life to the community. Resurrection power is less like energy that accelerates speed and more like endurance that preserves love to the end. In the end, John 21 shows that the direction of faith is not only inner repair for individuals; it is power that reconstructs the mission and ethics of the church.
John 21 shows how resurrection power works: it does not remain as a transcendent event only, but gives a path to disciples who have lost direction, restores love that has failed, and reorganizes community into mission. When we meditate on this chapter along Pastor David Jang's interpretation, both the church and the believer hold two things together: spiritual discernment that realigns direction by the Word, and concrete practice that carries mission by love. Post-resurrection life is not "a life that merely goes back," but "a life that begins again." Our night ends, and dawn has already come. The Lord standing on the shore still asks today, "Do you have any fish?" And he still calls us: "Cast the net." "Feed my sheep." "Follow me." When the church responds to that call, the net becomes full and yet does not tear, and resurrection power is translated into the language of life in the midst of the world. Pastor David Jang's conclusion from John 21 is unmistakable: obedience that aligns direction toward the Lord is the channel that brings resurrection power into today's life.
The reason Pastor David Jang's sermons on John 21 carry particular persuasive force is that they translate the resurrection not as "an event in the distant past," but as "a force that moves the present." Those sermons do not leave us stranded in the sea of self-pity; they lead us back to the shore where the Lord's voice is heard. And on that shore we keep hearing the same questions: Is there love? Is there care? And is the direction of following the Lord clear? Where those questions are answered faithfully, the church begins again. At that very point, resurrection power becomes the breath of today.
