Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 24:12

"And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold." — Matthew 24:12 (ASV)

Because iniquity shall abound... — A better translation is lawlessness. No word could more fitly represent the condition of Judea in the time just mentioned, when brigandage, massacres, extortion, and assassination became common.

The love of many... — A better translation is of the many. This refers to the majority of the true Israel who would be found in the Church of Christ, and perhaps also the greater part of the nation as a whole.

This cooling of love was the natural result of the situation implied by “lawlessness.” The tendency of such times, as seen in the histories of famines, pestilences, and revolutions, is to intensify selfishness. This selfishness appears both in the more excusable form of self-preservation and in the darker form of self-aggrandizement.

We see, perhaps, one instance of this love growing cold in the tendency among Hebrew Christians to forsake the assembling of themselves together (Hebrews 10:25).