Lawlessness and Love



Last weekend at the church I Pastor, I dove straight into Jesus' "Olive Grove Session(s)" this past weekend with a whopper of teaching about soon-ish and far-ish events. Some things He said would occur within a generation while other things would be delayed a bit. It is hard to know a lot for certain in this part of Scripture.

In Matthew 24:12 Jesus speaks of a time where lawlessness increases and love grows colder. That's a bit of a bleak picture, right?

The word in Greek for lawlessness is essentially 'no law' or in a sense (anomia), one becomes anti or against law.

To take this further, Paul writes about a 'man of lawlessness' (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5) that some see as the 'anti-Christ' figure that will one day appear and I think there's a case for that person, and yet, according to 1 John, more than just one anti-christ (aka one who denies Jesus is Messiah) is present possibly signaling the end may come at any time now. In 2 Timothy 3, we learn that difficult days will come in increasing measure as people turn away from loving God. We will observe people doing evil and deceiving others going from bad to worse.

It is truly hard to know specifics on timeframes and just how much God will tolerate so that as many people as possible are added to the kingdom. Lawlessness may be on the rise in our timeframe so what now?

What we can do is be vigilant and ready and stay on mission - living with eyes wide open in holy anticipation and continuing to increase the temperature of our love for our neighbor and the least of these. As we talked about this past Sunday, we do well to avoid obsession with ending timeframes and focus instead on Jesus, the author, and perfecter of our faith - watching and waiting for Him while keeping our hearts warm for our neighbor and living missional.

As one commentator writes, "What we should be doing is looking for Jesus Christ and anticipating his return. When you are looking for Jesus to return you will be motivated to live right and hopefully do what he wants you to do before he returns." 


Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

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