Commentaries:
In recent years, the indicator in verse 12 about "love . . . grow[ing] cold" has often been cited when a grievance toward a particular church organization or group arose. This verse, however, can easily be misapplied, so it behooves us to more fully understand what it means so that we can know if or when it is being fulfilled.
Understanding the word translated "love" is a vital first step. It is the well-known Greek word agape, the love that people have only because God has given it to them (Romans 5:5; II Timothy 1:7; I John 2:5; 4:7-8). The people whose agape love is growing cold must have had it in the first place, so it refers to those whom God has called into a relationship with Him (John 6:44).
It is important to differentiate between this agape love and the other types of love mentioned in the Bible. Phileo love means "to be a friend to" or "to be fond of" a person or object, indicating "having affection for," whereas Strong's Concordance notes that agape "is wider, embracing especially the judgment and the deliberate assent of the will as a matter of principle, duty and propriety" (emphasis ours). Similarly, philadelphia love means "fraternal affection" or "brotherly love." Agape love, though, is manifested first toward God, because it is a dutiful, submissive, obedient love, one that does what is right regardless of how a person feels about it. In other words, agape love has a moral core rather than an emotional one.
The Bible shows that, in general, we show agape love to the Father through our obedience and submission, especially to His law (John 14:15-23; 15:10; I John 2:5; 5:2-3; II John 6). We show agape love to each other through sacrifice, just as Jesus' example of love—to those around Him and to us—was through sacrifice (John 13:34; 15:12-13; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 5:2, 25; I John 3:16, 18; 4:9-12).
The meaning of Matthew 24:12, then, is that agape love will grow cold because of lawlessness, even though there may still be brotherly love, kindness, and human affection. Remember, we show agape love to God through obedience—the opposite of lawlessness—so when disobedience increases, agape grows cold. An example of this appears in the letter to the Ephesians, where Jesus says that they had left their first love—their first agape—and He commands them to repent (Revelation 2:4-5), that is, to turn away from their lawlessness. When there is compromise, or the setting aside of God's standard of righteousness and holiness, then the submissive love toward God and the sacrificial love toward man will begin to grow cold. It is a simple cause-and-effect relationship.
In this prophecy, Jesus Christ is describing an ongoing breakdown in the relationship with God. Since that most important relationship is the source of agape love, if it is waning, then it will be evident in other relationships. A symptom may be that sacrificial love toward other people is decreasing, but the real cause is that the relationship with God is cooling off.
A cause of this deterioration is found in the preceding verse: "Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many" (Matthew 24:11). While a true prophet always upholds God's law (Deuteronomy 13:3-4; Isaiah 8:19-20; Romans 8:7), a false prophet is willing to compromise with God's standard of holiness when it suits him. Those following a false teacher will likewise slide into lawlessness, becoming separated from God (Isaiah 59:1-3).
David C. Grabbe
Is the Love of Many Growing Cold?
In some areas, chaos and anarchy already approach the level of “lawlessness,” and the exasperation of many
“Lawlessness” is from the Greek word anomia, which denotes a condition of contempt and violation of law. With all the uprisings, crimes, and hostility continuously populating our newsfeeds, we are witnessing an abundance of this prophesied lawlessness nearly every day.
In this verse, the Greek word for love is agapē, godly love, the kind of love God expresses toward us and which we are to learn to express toward both Him and each other. Jesus is warning us that many of His called people—the only humans who can possess the love of God in their hearts because of the Holy Spirit in them (Romans 5:5)—are passively letting love grow stone-cold through feelings of frustration and hopelessness! The Contemporary English Version translates this verse, “Evil will spread and cause many people to stop loving others.”
Despite how we may feel, we cannot let anger at sin and sinners get in the way of our responsibility to continue loving our fellow man. Doing so is a sign of returning to the carnality of our pre-conversion lives when we allowed our emotions to cause us to react to difficult circumstances in ungodly ways. Our Savior set the proper example by loving His potential brothers and sisters so much that He gave His life for every one of us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8)!
We must overcome these feelings of resentment and not let the pervasive spread of hatred and evil in this world derail us from our divinely assigned responsibilities. Jesus states in the next verse, “But he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13). Only those who patiently continue to live according to Christ's teachings even amidst the most troubling times will enter God's Kingdom.
But enduring through chaos is not something God's people can do alone. This prophecy is a message to the church at the time of the end, to those who have the love of God because He has chosen to bestow His grace upon them. A Christian's responsibility is to reciprocate this love back to Him in obedience and out to others in acts of service. In this way, we strengthen our bonds between God and our brethren, giving us extra faith and unity to weather the stormy times.
We do not need to be too concerned with the fulfillment of prophecy, particularly about the when of Christ's return. We will never figure out the correct dates since they are under the Father's control (Matthew 24:36). We may not even be able to determine the right players beforehand! Trying to know these things beforehand is futile and time-wasting.
Instead, what the Bible teaches is to be ready. Jesus counsels His disciples in Matthew 24:44, “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Being ready entails, in part, meeting life's daily challenges now to overcome our faults and grow in righteous character. That is job one: preparing ourselves to live like God in His Kingdom.
Despite its seeming pessimism, Matthew 24:12 actually provides some hope. It reads, “. . . the love of many will grow cold” (emphasis ours). Jesus says “many,” not “all.” Some people's love will not grow cold; some will remain faithful. What can we do to be part of the lesser number, keeping our godly love alive?
Most of all, we must keep our focus on Jesus Christ and His example of loving behavior and strive to imitate it. In this way, as Paul writes in II Timothy 1:6 (ESV), we will “fan into flame the gift of God” and keep it boiling hot. If we do these things, the pervasive spread of evil will not cause us to stop loving others.
John Reiss
Waxing Cold
The Bible shows us the damage caused when God's people do not believe how special we are to Him. How do we keep our love from going cold? We must go to the source to replenish it. Where is that source? Where does real love come from? The answer is found in I John 4:19: "We love Him because He first loved us."
The next verse, Matthew 24:13, reinforces this thought: "But he who endures to the end shall be saved." Jesus sets up a contrast. Verse 12 describes people without faith in God's love for us growing cold and not enduring. In verse 13, "but" suggests that those with faith in His love will endure and be saved.
What happened over the past decade or so is nothing compared to what is ahead for some of us. The time of Jacob's trouble will be terrible. Many will face famine, pestilence, and persecution. Friends and family may turn on us. Church members will die. When all this happens, there may be no physical evidence to see how much God loves us. How will we endure those times? We will, but only if we absolutely believe in how special we are to God, how much He loves us. That is the faith we will need to endure any trial.
Pat Higgins
Faith to Face Our Trials
Since Jesus spoke this prophecy directly to His disciples, it must be intended primarily as an admonition for His disciples living during the end time. It also indicates that, when compared with the persecution Christians have received all through the times since the church was formed, Christians will have to endure some measure of the Tribulation that Jesus forecasts.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Fully Accepting God's Sovereignty, Part Three: The Fruits
The apostle John declares that sin is the transgression of God's commandments (I John 3:4, KJV), including the two great commandments Jesus spoke in Mark 12:28-31. The word translated as "sin" literally means "to miss the mark." Combining these principles gives us a very broad definition of sin: Sin is imperfectly loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and imperfectly loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Romans 3:23 declares that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." In other words, all have sinned in the past, and in the present all fall short in reflecting God's love, which is a major part of His glory. Godly love does not have to grow cold for it to be shown imperfectly. It will be shown imperfectly when it is demonstrated by God's still-imperfect children. We all are in this state.
This is not to say that we should give up trying to perfect God's love. On the contrary, we have every responsibility to do our utmost to perfect it (I John 2:5; 4:12, 17-18). At the same time, it should not shock us when our spiritual brothers and sisters show God's love to us imperfectly, for we are guilty of the same toward them—and toward God.
Perhaps we find ourselves in a situation where it appears that God's love in others is growing cold. Maybe we see God's standard of holiness being ignored or compromised, and some form of lawlessness is beginning to show up. We may see little evidence of sacrificial love, and relationships are beginning to be strained. What should we do?
There are two possibilities. The first is that our discernment is correct, and what Jesus Christ foretold in Matthew 24:12 is coming to pass, perhaps not in its ultimate fulfillment, but at least in type. The second is that our discernment is incorrect, and that God's love is actually present and not growing cold, but we are having trouble seeing it.
If our discernment is correct, and we truly are in a circumstance where agape love is waning, Jesus has already indicated what He wants us to do. Matthew 24:13 says, "But he who endures to the end shall be saved." When many are letting their relationships with God deteriorate, the emphasis is on patient, active endurance.
I Corinthians 13 gives a beautiful description of agape love, which parallels Jesus' exhortation to endure in several points. Verse 4 says that godly love "suffers long." It displays patience and endurance, even in the face of being loved imperfectly. Verse 7 adds that godly love "bears all things" and "endures all things." However, if we are not showing patience or endurance in response to imperfect love, then we are simply responding with carnality rather than with God's love.
Similarly, verse 5 says that godly love "thinks no evil." True love pays no attention to a suffered wrong, nor takes account of the evil done to it. It does not keep a running list of all the ways it has been offended or loved imperfectly. That, again, would be responding to imperfect love with carnality. So, if we find ourselves in the midst of a fulfillment of Matthew 24:12, we really have our work cut out for us because we will have to endure patiently and continue to display God's love rather than allow our own agape to also grow cold in response.
Conversely, God's love may be present, but our discernment may be incorrect, and we are missing it by looking for agape only in one application. We may be continually waiting for a specific type of sacrificial love, and if we do not receive it, we may suppose that God's love is absent. However, we are not all the same in how we show love or how we recognize it. We may need to take a step back and look for facets of God's love that are present, rather than focusing on what may be absent.
In addition, given that human nature is still present within us, we also have to remember that nothing inhibits or damages our ability to see things clearly like focusing on the self. That is, we tend to evaluate whether God's love is present based on how we feel or how we are affected, rather than on objectively looking for God's spiritual workmanship in the overall situation.
David C. Grabbe
Is the Love of Many Growing Cold?
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Matthew 24:13:
2 Chronicles 15:1-2
Matthew 5:6
Matthew 5:10
Matthew 7:15-20
Matthew 24:12-13
Matthew 24:12-13
Matthew 24:12-13
Matthew 24:21-22
Mark 12:28-31
1 Corinthians 10:10
Galatians 6:9-10
Ephesians 6:12-13
Ephesians 6:17
1 Thessalonians 5:8
2 Thessalonians 3:10-13
Hebrews 3:6
Hebrews 4:1-2
James 1:2-3
Revelation 3:10