Yesterday, we were continuing in our series in Jeremiah. We covered a large passage, from Jeremiah 4:5-6:30, and so couldn’t say everything that we might in the allotted time. What follows is one of the observations that I didn’t expressly make but I think is both interesting and valid.

In Jeremiah 5:1, we read this:

Roam through the streets of Jerusalem.
Investigate;
search in her squares.
If you find one person,
any who acts justly,
who pursues faithfulness,
then I will forgive her.

Having pronounced judgement on Judah, God tells Jeremiah if he can find even one righteous person, he will relent of his anger and forgive the country. All for one person. So, Jeremiah sets about looking throughout the city to find even one righteous person. He tries the poor, the suffering, the upper class, the priests, the prophets and even the children all to no avail. All he had to do was find one righteous person, but there was none to be found and so God’s judgement is both coming and entirely justified.

God has effectively made the same deal in the New Covenant. If just one righteous man can be found, God will avert disaster. Only, we look around and find as Paul did, there is none righteous, not even one. Experience tells us that sin pervades everything. Go into almost any town or city and you will find exactly what Jeremiah found in Jerusalem. Sure, it may manifest in a whole different bunch of ways. But there is no one righteous, not one. Which presents something of a problem because God insists that he would avert disaster upon his people for sake of even one righteous person, but they are nowhere to be found.

At least, that is how it appears until Jesus shows up. God did find one righteous man. God himself came to be that single righteous man required for God to relent of his anger and avert judgement. In Christ, his righteousness covers his people. God’s judgement is averted because of that one man, Jesus Christ the righteous.

There can be a tendency amongst some to drive a wedge between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament. But the same God who promised Jeremiah that even one righteous person would cause him to avert judgement in the Old Testament is the same God who promises us, because of one man, the many will be made righteous. God asks now for exactly what he asked then, one righteous man. He brings or relents of judgement based on that singular righteous man, whether in Jeremiah’s day or our own.