Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
look and take note!
Search her squares to see
if you can find a man,
one who does justice
and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her.

via Passage: Jeremiah 5 (ESV Bible Online).

One would think, listening to some people that this mush be hypothetical “moralism” a “typological overlay of the covenant of works.”  What God really wants hearers to do is to give up on justice and truth and cry for God’s mercy to obtain pardon.

But the hypothetical moralism won’t work because there is no “covenant of works,” hypothetical or real, that can offer pardon.  The “covenant of works”–that is, the covenant God made with Adam in the beginning before sin–demanded perfect and perpetual obedience.  There was no provision for forgiveness because it was impossible to do so.

The point of Jeremiah is not that no one can “do justice” or “seek truth.”  The point is just the opposite.  Someone had better start or the wrath of God will fall.

As Jesus dictated to the Apostle John in Revelation 2: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”