1 John 2:8 “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

I once bought a cell phone on eBay. Despite being three generations behind the latest iPhone, it was listed on eBay as “new.” Sure enough, it arrived in the original box, still shrink-wrapped, with no evidence any human had ever touched it since the day it first went into that box in China.

 New doesn’t always mean “new in time.” New can also mean “new in quality.” That’s what John is trying to say when he says, “Yet I am writing a new command.” Love hasn’t lost any of its luster. It hasn’t lost any of its power either. That’s clear in the two places we see it at work.

“Its truth is seen in him,” that is, in Jesus. If we want to understand Christian love, there is no better place to look than Jesus. Later in this book John will write, “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” What do you call it when the people God created, the most gifted and privileged of all his creatures, completely turn against him and abandon him, and though he has the power to do so, God doesn’t wipe them out and start over?

Instead, he promises to rescue them. For millennium after millennium he holds out his hands to them and invites them to come home. One day he comes and he takes their shape, actually adopts the same sickened and weakened material they had made of the bodies he once gave them, and he lives in the garbage dump they had made of the perfect planet he once fashioned as their home. For thirty years he serves them. When they are sick he heals them. When they are hungry he feeds them. When they criticize him and attack him, he sits down to teach them.

Finally, he shoulders the guilt for all their violence, and all their selfishness, and all their lack of self-control, and he suffers hell on a cross to make it all go away, like none of it had ever happened. He forgives them. What do you call that? That’s love. It’s not the attraction of a man for a woman or the comradery between close friends. It’s love freely given, just because Jesus chooses to love us.

That all happened two thousand years ago, but it is still as perfect and as shiny as that iPhone in the shrink-wrapped box. It’s lovely to look at. It’s powerful to take in and consider. It’s new.

And here’s how it’s useful: John says love’s truth is seen in him. There is something here that is hard to deny, isn’t there? There is something that is just right, and winsome, and convincing, and magnetic, pulling us in.

You can debate with people about all sorts of spiritual trivia. You can try to answer all their objections to what the Bible says on a thousand different topics. But in the end, this is what is going to win them: the truth of God’s love, the truth we see as love emerges from the life and death of Jesus.

Now, here’s the surprising part. “It’s truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” Jesus’ love isn’t the only love that enables people to see what is true. It is not the only love with the magnetic power to change hearts and minds and draw people toward God. Your love, our love, may only be a poor reflection of his. Only his love may have the power to pull people all the way home to faith.

But still, love’s truth is seen in you. Your love may well be someone’s introduction to Christ’s love. That’s why Jesus says, “Let your lights so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Love triumphs, when it emerges from our hearts and lives and leads people closer to God’s truth.