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Luke 5:39  And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, “The old is better.”

All three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) record Jesus’ little ‘parables’ about not patching old garments with new fabric and not putting new wine in old wineskins to show that he (Jesus) had come to bring something quite new into the Rabbis’ understanding and teaching about the Kingdom of God.

The old Judaism of the day was, quite rightly, firmly rooted in the OT Scriptures as God’s infallible inspired Word, but the Rabbis had developed a massive, spiritual-life-threatening problem by the way they applied the OT to their daily living.  They were so committed to the idea of earning merit and gaining God’s favour by doing good works that they missed the whole concept of the need for God’s grace in both pursuing ‘works righteousness’ and in depending ultimately on grace for acceptance when they fell so far short of attaining their aim.

The erstwhile Pharisee, and now Apostle, Saul/Paul, explained it like this: “What then shall we say?  That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal.  Why not?  Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works” (Romans 9:30-32), and  “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.  For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.  Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.  Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:1-4)

Jesus had had to explain to one of the Pharisees, Nicodemus, that grasping this ‘new’ understanding actually necessitated being ‘born again’ (John 3:1-15), and Paul himself, the Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, had to have a life-changing experience of the Holy Spirit on the Damascus Road in order to grasp this radically ‘new’ idea.

It is interesting that only Luke includes Jesus’ little addendum (which is today’s verse) to the ‘parables’ of the ‘patches’ and the ‘winebottles’!  Perhaps Matthew and Mark thought it might be too confusing to future readers because the common preference for old wine over new could be interpreted as Jesus’ recommendation rather than his warning.  It is too easy for us all to become so settled and comfortable with the status quo, the ‘old wine’ of tradition, that we miss out on the rich and liberating blessing of the ‘new wine’ of the Gospel of Grace.

How important it is that I don’t allow my ‘traditions’, as important and helpful as they might be, to keep me from enjoying the ‘new wine’ that Jesus holds out to me in his glorious life-giving Gospel.

– Bruce Christian