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.

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.

Read More

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]