“Abound More and More”
At the end of the age, Christ warned of the coming of false Christs, wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another” (Matthew 24:9–10). Christ was speaking to the disciples and is speaking to the Church today by extension. As world tensions and hatred escalate, He is warning us of the inevitability of that happening within the Church in the last days.
We do not like to even think of such things, but Christ, to our benefit, holds nothing back. “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). The lawlessness of the culture and world we live in is stunning as compared to a few years ago or even to a few short months ago. And it goes without saying that the more we are exposed to it, the greater the likelihood of our being influenced by it. In short, our love can grow cold.
The good news is that love growing cold is not a given, it is a choice. “But he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13). To endure essentially means to stay the course, to remain, to have fortitude or to persevere. That means that we cannot allow ourselves to stagnate spiritually. We must be growing in the grace God has extended to us.
The Apostle Paul said this concerning love: “But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4:9–10). Because God is summed up by the word love, we know that this is to be the identifying characteristic among ourselves. The Thessalonians had done well in that regard, but Paul urges them not to just stay the same, but to increase more and more in the fruit of love. So, the concept of continually increasing in love can clearly be tied to enduring to the end, and away from lawlessness. We endure, through a lawless environment, whether in or outside the Church by increasing in love.
Just as God’s law is very broad and expansive in the spirit of it, so is our love to correspondingly be. “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,” (Philippians 1:9–10). The letter of the law can be kept and initially be considered love. But God intends it to develop into much more – to go much deeper as we come to understand and discern the spiritual application of it.
That is why the brethren in Thessalonica were exhorted to increase more and more in love. For them or us to endure to the end, love must become deeply internalized. We must come to discern the depths of it. Christ did what He did for mankind when He was not just hated by some, but by all. In love, He endured to the end, and so must we with spiritual discernment.
Marshall Stiver
