In Matthew, Mark and Luke, this account follows on heals of the feast that Matthew, the tax collector, threw for Jesus after Jesus called him to be a disciple. I suspect they will connect.
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.[1] So they came to Jesus and said, “John’s disciples frequently fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but your disciples continue to eat and drink and don’t fast.”
Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast and mourn while the bridegroom[2] is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they do not fast. [3] But the days are coming when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and at that time they will fast.” (Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33;Matthew 9: 14-15)
Let’s talk about this bride/bridegroom imagery. God in the Old Testament was portrayed as a groom to His bride, Israel.
“Your Maker is your husband—the LORD Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth” (Isaiah 54:5).[4]
But the prophets portrayed Israel as committing spiritual adultery by worshiping false gods and forsaking Yahweh. Eventually, God passed this message on through Jeremiah:
“I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. . . . Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood [idols].” (Jeremiah 3:8–10).
To make matters worse, God (through Jeremiah) asked a rhetorical question:
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again?” (Jeremiah 3:1).
According to the Law, no. A man who had divorced his wife could not remarry her (Deuteronomy 24:1–4). Israel had been divorced by God, so, according to the law, that was it. No second chances. However…
“‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am faithful…I will not be angry forever… I am your husband. I will choose you . . . and bring you to Zion” (Jeremiah 3:12-14).’”[5]
The law forbade that a divorced wife return and be restored, but Jesus had just told them (in relation to calling and feasting with tax collectors and sinners) that he required mercy more than the ritualistic sacrifices that kept the letter of the law but not the spirit of it.[6] Here, he illustrated God showing mercy through Jesus to an undeserving and faithless people.
This marriage language continues throughout the New Testament.
Paul notes in Ephesians 5:32 that marriage is a mystery, like the marriage of Christ and the church.
Revelation 19 makes a pretty big deal about the future marriage supper of the Lamb, which is the feasting imagery for an eternity that the bride, the church, will spend with their Divine groom.[7]
So when Jesus said a time of wedding feasting had arrived, he was making an important claim: the exile was over, the divorce had ended; the groom (God) and the bride (God’s people) were reunited through Jesus. The age of the Messiah had begun.[8] That was a cause for feasting.
He also told them a parable: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk new cloth on an old garment, because the new patch will pull away from the old garment and the tear will be worse. The piece from the new will not match the old.
And no one pours new wine[9] into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. Instead new wine must be poured into new wineskins. No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ “ [10] (Luke 5:36-39; Matthew 9:16;Mark 2:21-22)
Jesus’ illustrations announced the arrival of a New Era, which we refer to as the New Covenant and which is revealed in the New Testament.
There have been 3 main ways people have understood these short parables to be making that point, mainly because it seems like the new wine is preferable here, but that seems at odds with the last comment about the old wine being better b) there are differences of opinion about what the old garment/wineskins represent.
OLD/NEW WINE = OLD/NEW COVENANT
One approach is to see Jesus declaring radical break between the Old Covenant through Moses and the New Covenant through Jesus.
“God never intended Christianity to patch up Judaism; it was a new departure.”[11]
“Grace and law, God’s righteousness and man’s, will never mix. The new wine of the gospel must be placed in the new wineskin of grace, not into the old one of law.”[13]
“The new wine is the Holy Spirit dwelling within renewed people, who cannot be constrained by the old precepts of the Law.”[14]
Clearly, there is a reason the New Covenant Jesus establishes is called “New.” But I’m not sure Jesus was intending to create an almost antagonism between the Old and New to such a degree that it almost sounds like we would be better off chopping off the first half of our Bible. That is clearly not how Jesus or the New Testament writers saw the Old Testament.
It’s not so clean as “didn’t have the Spirit”/”now have the Spirit.” The Spirit works and moves in the Old Covenant; the time of exile between the Old and New Testament was a time that the Jewish people mourned what they perceived as the removal of God’s Spirit.[15] Though the Holy Spirit now lives within, the Holy Spirit always lived with God’s people and “came upon them” at times.
It’s not a clean “OT era is irrelevant”/”NT era is all that matters.” Jesus and the New Testament writers constantly referred to the Old Testament, calling it Scripture that was God-breathed and capable of completing us and equipping us for every good work.[16] They didn’t ditch it at all; they built on the foundations in the Old Covenant to explain life in the New Covenant (and used the New Covenant to clarify the purpose of the Old Covenant).
It’s not a clean “The Old Testament was all Law”/ The New Testament is all Grace.” Grace actually saturates the Old Testament,[17] though clearly that message had been lost on Jesus’ audience of Pharisees. Jesus himself said that he didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.[18] It’s not as if the Law no longer offers a constraint that keeps us in the path of righteousness. If life is like bowling, the Law is the bumpers that keep us from rolling into the ditches of sin. And, as Paul makes clear, there is a very foundational New Covenant Law that was already captured in the 10 Commandments:
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)
That’s what is often referred to The Law Of Love – in the New Covenant. So, I don’t think law and grace are enemies. God established them both; they both play a God-ordained purpose when rightly understood and rightly applied to our lives,[19] namely, obedience as a response to God rather than a means to God.
Something new is bursting forth in the New Covenant, but it’s a fulfillment of that to which the Old was pointing, a fulfillment in which the role of God’s amazing grace in the midst of our bumbling human effort is featured front and center as the only hope on which we build a foundation that will last into eternity.
OLD WINESKINS = TRADITIONS/NEW WINE =BIBLICAL TRUTH
Another perspective is that the old garments and old wineskins are a reference to traditions established over the centuries by the rabbis that arose around the Bible and not from the Bible. In Mark, the Pharisees are told:
“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” (7:9).
Jesus’ new message of true faith and true worship was going to mess up those old traditions. In this reading, the new wine and new garments are Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets rightly understood, and the old garment and old wineskins as what the Pharisees in the first century called the tradition of the elders. The point Jesus was making is that the true gospel is going to wreck man-made traditions[20]
I think there is important truth in this perspective. Struggling to separate human tradition and cultural bias from the true message of Scripture has been an ongoing problem. For 2,000 years, there has been a constant need in the church to discern the difference between what God would have us take from Scripture and what we would have us take from Scripture.
In our own nation’s history, the Bible was used to defend slavery as if it was God’s will as revealed in Scripture. Thankfully, there were always prophetic voices who said, “No. You are reading into the Bible what you want to find, not what God wants you to find.”
And thank God that the Holy Spirit illuminated Scripture to those in slavery such that they saw the truth not just of Jesus but of their humanity and worth in the pages of Scripture even when the preachers their masters forced them to listen to did not. [21]
Reading these parables as showing a clash between the powerful allure of human tradition and the challenging nature of divine Scripture rightly understood fits the context of the clash that had just occurred over Jesus’ calling of Matthew and feasting with sinners.
NEW (WINE)SKINS = NEW (REVELATION)DISCIPLES
This brings me to the third and final perspective. The Jewish sages were known for referring to vessels for containing wine as people. The wine is the teaching that the individual consumes or contains. The parables would then look something like this[22]:
New garment/wineskin = previously uneducated students
Old garment/wineskin= previously educated students
wine=teaching
Disciples who studied Torah in the various schools of the Pharisees would be inclined to disregard new teaching because they assumed they had been given a superior education. It makes me think of all the situations in life where it is so hard to undo what we have been taught through words and actions.
In basketball, it’s much easier to teach someone to shoot than it is to correct the form of someone who is already shooting.
When AJ went to run track at Cornerstone. They undid all his previous coaching. He probably would have been better off not having run track before he got there.
If you saturate yourself in a media bubble, it becomes increasingly hard to even conceive that you might not be right about an issue when you hear a different perspective.
Depending on your family of origin, you know how hard it is to undo unhealthy, formative training in all kinds of areas.
Even as Christians, we have been raised in churches that exist in communities, countries, traditions, denominations that absolutely form us in ways that undoubtedly get intermingled with traditions, some good and some bad. I know I have found that as I have learned how Christians around the world read and apply Scripture, it has been humbling to concede that I might not have been “rightly dividing the world of truth.”[23]
This fits the context in which these parables are found, namely the call and selection of Jesus' disciples. He was choosing fishermen, tax collectors and "sinners" who had not been educated by the rabbis. (Only the very gifted went on to study beyond the age of 13; only the truly exceptional became disciples of the rabbis. The fact that Jesus was calling adults likely reveals they weren’t qualified or weren’t overly interested in following a rabbi.)
That criticism was that Jesus’ disciples were not at all like the disciples of John or the Pharisees. And Jesus says, “Correct. I need a different kind of disciple than the ones you have.”[24] It takes a new kind of person to believe and embrace the reality of Jesus and His Kingdom. New garments, new wineskins and new students.[25]
This has come up several times in the first few chapters of the gospels. True change will only happen in our lives when we experience the miraculous salvation and transformation that only Jesus can bring.
We will not work our way into salvation. (Ephesians 2:8)
All of us fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
We will not earn the right to be saved. (Romans 11:6) I don’t care who we are – we don’t deserve to be saved. (Romans 5:8)
It is by grace we have been saved (Ephesians 2:8-9), and it is by grace that God remains faithful to us when we commit spiritual adultery. (2 Timothy 2:13)
This gift is available to all. “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)
“New” disciples are characterized by:
Humility (about ourselves and our perspectives/traditions)
Grace (paid forward from Jesus to everybody around us)
Love (as the grace-motivated fulfilling of the Law)
A generous invitation to the feast with Jesus
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[1] As a sign of contrition and penitence associated with prayer, fasting was a part of Old Testament piety from the time of the judges (Judg. 20:26; 1 Kin. 21:27), sometimes becoming an empty ritual (Is. 58:3). The Pharisees and their adherents apparently fasted twice a week (Luke 18:12). ESV Reformation Study Bible
[2] In the OT, God the Father was the bridegroom (see Isa. 62:5; Hos. 2:19–20). ESV Global Study Bible
[3] Fasting was often linked with mourning, whereas weddings were considered a time for rejoicing. Many rabbis taught that weddings took priority over many religious obligations. (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible)
[4] The story of Ruth and Boaz is a story about a Husband/Redeemer scenario.
[5] Isaiah said basically the same thing (Isa 54:5–6; 62:4–5. When God commanded Hosea to find his unfaithful wife and buy her back from slavery, he said, “Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods” (Hosea 3:1).
[6] James would later write that “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13) The apostle Paul would write, “Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! . . . And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (Romans 11:1–6, 11, 23).
[7] I got a lot of good information for that whole section from the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible.
[8] NIV First Century Study Bible
[9] New wine less than a year old was really popular (Nehemiah 10:39; Proverbs 3:10; Hosea 4:11; Haggai 1:11. Luke records (Acts 2:13) that the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit led people to the conclusion that the disciples were “full of new wine.” (Ellicott’s Commentary)
[10] 10Do not abandon old friends, for new ones cannot equal them. A new friend is like new wine; when it has aged, you can drink it with pleasure. (Sirach 9.10)
[11] Believer’s Bible Commentary
[12] Believer’s Bible Commentary
[13] Thru The Bible Commentary
[14] Orthodox Study Bible
[15] https://www.thomasnelsonbibles.com/blog/the-holy-spirit-in-the-old-testament/
[16] 2 Timothy 3:16-17
[17] https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/grace-in-the-old-testament
[18] Matthew 5:17
[19] An article at doctrine.org entitled “Paul and the Law” has some helpful explanations. https://doctrine.org/paul-and-the-law
[20] “Luke 5:39—What are the Old Wine and the New Wine Mentioned Here?” Mineko Hondahttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229750848.pdf
[21] I highly recommend African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation, by Lisa M. Bowens, as well as Stony The Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, by Cain Hope Felder.
[22] https://www.bethimmanuel.org/articles/new-wine-and-old-wineskins-parable-luke-536-39-re-examined
[23] I found the following books to be very insightful. None of them are perfect – there were question marks in the margins to match text I highlighted – but they jarred my thinking loose in some very important ways.
· Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, and Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes, as well as The Cross and the Prodigal
· Lois Tverberg, Walking In The Dust Of Rabbi Jesus
· Scott McKnight, The Blue Parakeet
· John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis 1
· Esau McCauley, Reading While Black
· Shane J. Woods’ series on Revelation
· The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series
[24] In Acts 4:13 Luke writes, "Now as [the Sanhedrin] observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus."
[25] https://www.bethimmanuel.org/articles/new-wine-and-old-wineskins-parable-luke-536-39-re-examined