Abounding Lawlessness and Abating
Love
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
MATTHEW 24:12
There are those who preach aplenty from the Sermon on the Mount—and well they may—but some of them grow strangely silent about the Olivet discourse. While we may differ as to some of the details, certainly a sermon that begins with the words, ''Take heed that no man deceive you,'' was never meant to confuse but to clarify its subject.
Our Lord points out several things that ''many'' will be doing in the last days. Many shall be offended and shall betray and hate one another (v.10). Many shall stumble, fall away, turn from Jesus, like Demas and Phygellus and Hermogenes long ago. Because persecution shall arise, many shall be offended. In another connection Jesus said, ''Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.'' Our Lord is either a sanctuary or a stumbling stone and in the last days it will be easy to find in Him an occasion for stumbling.
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False prophets shall arise and shall deceive many (vs. 5, 11). Any religious ventriloquist with a dummy can deceive a gullible generation that will not believe the truth. Paul tells us that these deceivers will lead captive silly women. Never have false teachers had such a picnic leading astray the very people who boast of their shrewdness.
But I am concerned just now with the third ''many.'' ''And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.'' Here is a double-barreled description of these times, and since ''iniquity'' means ''lawlessness,'' what we have is Abounding Lawlessness and Abating Love.
''Lawlessness shall abound.'' For further information, read any newspaper, listen to the radio, scan the magazines, the best-sellers; just stand on any street corner and look and listen. Iniquity does not just exist; it abounds. There is more of it than ever, it is more extensive and more excessive. Men love everything but righteousness, and fear everything but God.
This lawlessness begins in the home, where ''there is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother'' (Prov. 30:11). Paul tells us that an outstanding mark of human depravity is disobedience to parents (Rom. 1:30), and is also a mark of the last days (II Tim. 3:2). Although at twelve years of age our Lord could confound the wise men in the Temple, He returned to Nazareth, and ''was subject'' for many years to Joseph and Mary. What a lesson for this generation of young rebels thumbing their noses at parental authority!
This lawlessness is fostered by modern pedagogy, which frowns at discipline and would make obsolete
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such words as ''obedience'' and ''duty''. Nothing must be allowed to thwart the personality development of the youngster, lest he be hampered, hindered, and inhibited. The dangers of repression are magnified, and self-expression is the big idea. These wiseacres forget that it is the stream repressed in the cylinders that drives the locomotive, not the steam expressed in the whistle.
So, what with no discipline at home or in school, we have a crop of juvenile delinquents and teen-age gangsters of the comic-book culture. The mystery of lawlessness that was already at work in Paul's day has honeycombed art and literature, business and society, religion and politics, and only the Restrainer, the Holy Spirit, keeps our world from being submerged in anarchy. When that restraint is removed, one might as well try to dam up Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stem the tide of lawlessness now abounding.
Of course, it all springs from the corrupt human heart, deceitful and desperately wicked, and the carnal mind at enmity with God. Liberal theologians who laughed at sin a few years ago are now terrified by the wreck of this civilization, but still too proud to come clean and fully admit their heresy—even they must now acknowledge the truth of Romans I spread across every newspaper.
''Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.'' With abounding lawlessness comes abating love. Observe that it is not zeal but love that waxes cold. Paul had zeal when he persecuted the church. One may give his goods to the poor and his body to be burned and have not love. Sardis had zeal, a name to be alive. Ephesus was aggressive and energetic, no doubt, but had left her first love.
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Nor, do we read that because lawlessness shall abound, the doctrine of many shall wax modernistic. It will, of course, but that is not what is in mind here. Some of the saints are as straight as a gun barrel doctrinally, and just as empty spiritually. Ephesus hated the deeds of the Nicolaitanes; her theology was sound. There are those who love to argue about the Abomination of Desolation and the Great Tribulation in this same chapter of our text but who seem to have overlooked this verse and are not grieved over their coldness of heart.
The sense of this verse is really that the love of most Christians will wax cold. Weymouth puts it: ''Because of the spread of lawlessness the love of the great majority will grow cold.'' Moffatt has it, ''And in most of you love will grow cold by the increase of iniquity.'' The new revised Standard Version reads, ''And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold.'' ''When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?'' Certainly He will not find much love.
We are living in a strange and weird hour. A sinister and satanic atmosphere pervades the world. The god of this age knows that his time is short and that the powers of darkness are working overtime. The lines are drawn, the issue is Christ or AntiChrist, and we have on one hand a demonstration of the Spirit and on the other a ''demon-stration'' of the devil.
It is a tired and weary world. The journey is too great for us all. Men's hearts fail them for fear. On top of the physical and mental languor there is poured out a spirit of deep sleep. Satan is out to disable the body,
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deceive the mind, and discourage the spirit. He tells sinners they are safe and he tells saints they are lost.
In such an hour it is not easy to keep the heart-fires burning. I have discovered Christians whom I have known for years gradually cooling off in their love toward God. Often in Christian homes it is difficult to talk on spiritual things. Talk anything else, and it would take several shorthand experts to keep up with the conversation; talk of Christ and one would think he was sitting up with a corpse.
When love toward Christ abates, love of the brethren dies. This badge by which we know that we have passed from death to life and by which all men know that we are His disciples is conspicuous for its absence. Another Tertullian could never write that it is said of us, ''How those Christians love each other!'' If the man who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar we have a bumper crop.
When love toward God abates, we begin to love what we ought to hate. Prayer-meetings become a drudgery and the movies a delight. We say of the house of God, as did the people of Malachi's day, ''Behold, what a weariness it is!'' When we love God we hate sin, we abhor that which is evil, we abstain from the appearance of evil. ''The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.'' ''If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.'' We have lost our sensitiveness to sin. We have become tolerant of evil. We say, ''Oh, well. things are not so bad; they could be worse.'' We think it a mark of broadmindedness to grow lenient toward sin, when actually it means that our love has grown cold.
Here is a test of our spiritual state: Do I now allow
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what once I abhorred? When the love of God abates, love of evil abounds. The man who tolerates sin will soon endorse and practise sin.
Has your love died down? Then stir up the gift of God that is within you. Repent and pray that the love of God may be shred afresh in your heart by the Holy Spirit. Jesus asked Peter, ''Lovest thou me?'' Everything else stems from that. When we love Him we will love the sheep and we will feed the sheep and we will go after lost sheep.
In Scotland years ago, before matches were invented, the fires went out in a certain community. The neighbors began to search for a house where smoke still curled from a chimney. Finally, on a hillside they found one little cottage where the fire still burned. Presently they came from all around to get a shovelful of coals to carry back to their own blackened hearths, and after a while the cheerful flames burned all over the neighborhood.
The fires are going out all over the world today. Keep your heart-fires burning, and others will be drawn by your warmth to seek coals for their own heart-fires. If the ashes have accumulated, get rid of them and stir up God's gift within you. Beware of abounding lawlessness and abating love!
