The Death of Love

Here is something the Lord told the disciples at the beginning of His Olivet Discourse:

“Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:9-12).

These passages are straightforward. He’s telling the disciples that in the Tribulation, they will be captured and tortured and some of them will be killed, and they will be hated by the world. In the Tribulation, there will be widespread escalation of hatred between loved ones, families, friends, and neighbors. The increase in betrayals and hatred coincides with the increase in false prophets and deceivers. The false prophets and the false teachers will be instigating these toxic environments filled with hatred and betrayal.

But the most amazing verse, for me, is Mat 24:12 in which the Lord said, “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”

A stark characteristic of the Tribulation will be the death of love.

That death of love coincides with the abounding iniquity. There has always been a connection between sin and the hardening of one’s heart. Consider Heb. 3:13, which says, “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” One shouldn’t be on guard about sin only but also about – the deceitfulness of sin because the deceitfulness of sin will harden your heart.

In other words, if you allow yourself to be deceived (or to rationalize) the sinful impulses of the flesh, and you swallow those lies and you commit those sins, then you are risking a hardening of your own heart. If you believe the lies you tell yourself to justify sinning, then you are putting yourself on a dangerous path of deadening your own heart.

The lure of sin is deceptive → deception leads to rationalization → rationalization leads to doing those sins → which leads to your heart becoming calloused.

In Matt. 24:12, when the Lord says iniquity shall abound, He means lawlessness will multiply. Lawlessness will increase in number and intensity. This spirit of lawlessness will spread like cancer around the globe. There will be in the world an active opposition to, or rejection of, God and all His moral standards. There will be widespread disorder, wickedness, rebellion, and a general moral breakdown of all societies.

Therefore, because of the abounding lawlessness, there will also be the death of love in the world. When the Lord says love, He says agape here – the selfless, divine, and principled love that embodies the nature of God (1 John 4:8). Agape is also charity in 1 Cor. 13. The Lord is saying that in the Tribulation love itself in all its attributes will be crushed under this mass indulgence of the flesh to live lawlessly.

Indulging in excess the impulses of your flesh leads to the death of love.

Lawlessness destroys the moral framework that protects love. And love isn’t just a victim. The death of love becomes an accelerant to indulge even greater depravity to compensate for that loss. The more intensely people rebel against God, the more hardened they become, the less capable they are of experiencing even crude forms of natural love that unbelievers can experience, and they will plunge headlong into extreme forms of pure evil. The less they love, the more they sin. The more they sin, the less they love — a vicious downward spiral into absolute spiritual ruin – spiritual entropy, in fact.

Romans 1 teaches us that a society given over to reprobate minds is also a society that is without natural affection. When iniquity multiplies, this also effects people’s attitudes, emotions, and perspectives. And today – entertainment glorifies sin. Religion compromises truth. Society normalizes rebellion. And what’s the result? A world where genuine agape love becomes so foreign to people, they view love as some naïve or silly notion.

Going down this path of the death of love by excessively indulging the flesh is what produces anomalies like serial killers. If you go down that path you know is wrong, your sinful flesh will go down that path with you and try to compel you to greater indulgences of those proclivities. Love dies inside of you. You feel a desensitization about the evils you’re committing. There’s a thickening callousness inside of you about the harm you’re doing to others. There is a growing hunger to indulge your flesh to greater extremes…

…and the end of that road is madness inside of your heart.

Solomon would make the point in Ecc. 9:3 that excessive indulgence of doing evil leads to “madness in their heart while they live.” What did Solomon mean by madness in their heart? The heart is where thoughts and decisions are made in close collaboration with the mind. So the excessive indulgence of evil can lead to madness inside of your own heart – a heart that is now expressing itself in extremely irrational behavior. You have become lost without the ability to reason in this fixed state to live against God’s divine, moral order.

Yes, your heart can lose its mind.

Guard the Flame of Love

Today, in the age of grace, we are living in a world drinking deep that same spirit of lawlessness. Even now, iniquity abounds. The chill of hatred creeps into homes and churches and nations. If we are not careful, the same cold winds that will freeze hearts through iniquity in the Tribulation will also numb our hearts today.

That is why Paul tells us to “be fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Rom 12:11). Why? Because the answer to abounding iniquity is abounding grace.

The cure for the cold death of love is new life by the cross. When sin multiplies, grace has to abound even more. If our hatred was conquered by His love, then we grace believers must conquer the world’s growing hatred with ever deeper love, grace, and truth.