Our English teacher taught us about juxtaposition our senior year. As we analyzed literature, we learned to look for the contrasting elements in stories and poems and the ways authors used those images to convey a message or create an effect.
The word juxtaposition came back to me this week as I read Zephaniah 3:17.
The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
It’s a verse I love, but this week it hit me in a new way: God is the warrior who sings over us.
The two images don’t seem to go together. A warrior who sings? Yet together they tell us something crucial about God’s heart for us.
God is the Mighty Warrior who saves, and he sings a song of rejoicing over you. Click To TweetThe first two chapters of Zephaniah are messages of judgment. Through the prophet, God pronounced judgment on Judah, Jerusalem, and the surrounding nations because of their idolatry and sin. Yet the third chapter of Zephaniah takes a turn. God promised that though judgment was coming, there would also be a day of restoration. God would leave a remnant who worshipped him faithfully from repentant hearts. And God promised he would rejoice over them with singing. Zephaniah 2 depicts God as the Mighty Warrior riding to battle. Zephaniah 3 depicts him as the Mighty Warrior who saves. It’s a juxtaposition of justice and mercy.
The cross is where God’s justice and mercy converge.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned,but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18)
God did not send Jesus to condemn the world because the world already stands condemned. We–you, me, all of us–stand condemned because of our own sin and rebellion against God. Yet on the cross Christ satisfied God’s justice so we can experience his mercy. The debt is paid; all we must do is respond in repentance and faith.
And when we come to Christ in faith, we encounter God as the Mighty Warrior who saves. He is the one who fights for us–fighting not to condemn but to save. As we relate to God in repentance and faith, he delights in us and rejoices over us with singing. God delights in us with the unfettered joy a groom has at the first glimpse of his bride on their wedding day. It’s an enthusiastic, whole-hearted, unqualified delight.
God delights in you. God rejoices over you. God loves you whole-heartedly–and God has already demonstrated his love for you on the cross. When you feel beat down, rejected, and condemned, look to Jesus. Justice is satisfied and his mercy awaits. The Mighty Warrior who saves has already done it, and he delights in you. Run to him and let him sing his song of joy over you.
Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash