Quiet in His love

Zephaniah 3:17 is such a beautiful verse: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” 

So often when I read this verse, my mind latches onto the fact that God rejoices over us with joy and joys over us with singing, but I skip right over “he will rest in his love.”

The word “rest” is translated from “charash,” which means to be silent, to let alone, or to be deaf. Gesenius’s Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon offers that when this word is used of God, it means “to be quiet as to sin; to pardon.”

The Amplified translation of this verse captures this meaning: “The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing.” (Emphasis mine)

How easy it is for us to recount…and recount…and recount our sins and even accept them as permanent stains we must live with. 

But that is not God’s heart. Scripture tells us in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The word “cleanse” here is “katharizo,” and it means to purify. This isn’t simply covering something over; it’s cleaning it through and through. 

This is why David could say in Psalm 103—both in real time in the Old Testament and prophetically—”As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

The stain we feel we must live with is a stain that’s simply not there. 

And in His great love for us, once we repent, He is silent regarding our sin. So when memories of that sin try to assail us, those memories are not from God. 

He is not recounting our sin. Instead, he is rejoicing over us with joy; He is exulting over us with singing, and He is quiet in His love for us.