The Incompatible Kingdoms: New Wine, Old Structures
Introduction: A Clash of Appetites
We come now to a passage that is frequently misunderstood. It is often treated as though Jesus is simply giving some practical advice on tailoring and winemaking. But we must never forget that our Lord is the Logos, the very pattern of reality, and when He speaks of cloth and wine, He is speaking of the deep structure of the cosmos. This is not a quaint, rustic illustration. This is a collision of two worlds, a clash of two kingdoms, a confrontation between two entirely different ways of approaching God and reality. The question that prompts this is about fasting, but the issue is far deeper. The issue is about what kind of religion can contain the explosive reality of the Incarnation.
The Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus with what appears to be a pious question. They fast, they pray, they are serious men. They are disciplined. Your disciples, on the other hand, are feasting. They are eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. The implied accusation is clear: your disciples are not serious. They are spiritually lax. They lack the rigor that true religion requires. This is the constant temptation of all formal, established religion. It mistakes the forms of piety for the power of it. It measures spirituality by what a man refrains from, rather than what he is filled with. It is a religion of subtraction, not a religion of glorious, overflowing addition.
Jesus's response is a declaration of war against this kind of brittle, morose, and self-important religiosity. He tells them, in effect, that they have fundamentally misunderstood what time it is. They are checking their liturgical calendars while the Author of time is standing in front of them. They are trying to apply their old, dusty rulebooks to the one who wrote the book. The kingdom of God has arrived, and it is not a committee meeting. It is a wedding feast. It is new wine, and new wine requires new wineskins.
The Text
And they said to Him, “The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do likewise, but Yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.” And He was also telling them a parable: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ ”
(Luke 5:33-39 LSB)
Feasting in the Presence of the King (vv. 33-35)
We begin with the challenge and the Lord's initial response.
"And they said to Him, “The disciples of John often fast and offer prayers, the disciples of the Pharisees also do likewise, but Yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days.”" (Luke 5:33-35)
The question is a classic example of what we might call spiritual one-upmanship. "We fast, you feast." It is an attempt to impose their categories of piety onto Jesus. Fasting, in the Old Covenant, was a sign of mourning, of repentance, of longing for the day of the Lord. It was an expression of absence. The Pharisees had turned this into a public performance, a badge of spiritual superiority. They were fasting twice a week, making sure everyone knew it.
Jesus answers by changing the entire frame of reference. He says you have misread the situation entirely. This is not a time for mourning; it is a time for celebration. "Can you make the attendants of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?" The answer is an emphatic no. It would be ludicrous. A wedding is the apex of joy and feasting. To show up at a wedding feast in sackcloth and ashes is to insult the bridegroom and misunderstand the nature of the event. Jesus is declaring Himself to be the bridegroom. This is a staggering claim. In the Old Testament, it is Yahweh who is the husband of Israel (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:19-20). Jesus is claiming to be the long-awaited husband, come to claim His bride. The Messiah is here. The party has started. To fast in His presence is to be spiritually tone-deaf.
Christianity, at its heart, is not a funeral. It is a feast. It is the good news of sins forgiven, of reconciliation with God, of the kingdom breaking into the world. Our God is not a dour cosmic bureaucrat. He is a father who throws a party for the returning prodigal. He is a king who prepares a great banquet. The central act of our worship is a celebratory meal. The presence of Jesus means joy.
But Jesus is also a realist. He acknowledges that the feast will be interrupted. "But the days will come; and when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast in those days." This is a clear, early prediction of His death. The bridegroom will be violently torn from them. And in that time of grief and longing, fasting will once again be appropriate. And so it is for us. We live in the "in-between" times. The bridegroom has come, and He has secured our salvation. We feast in remembrance of that victory. But He is not yet physically present with us, and we long for His return. So we fast. But notice the difference. The Pharisees fasted out of a sense of lack. We fast out of a sense of longing for the one we already have by faith. We have tasted the good wine, and it makes us long for the day when we will drink it new with Him in His kingdom.
The Folly of Patchwork Religion (v. 36)
Jesus then moves to His first parable, illustrating the utter incompatibility of His new work with the old system.
"And He was also telling them a parable: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old.”" (Luke 5:36 LSB)
The Pharisees' approach was to try to "fit Jesus in." They wanted to take this new teaching, this new power, and use it to patch up their existing system of righteousness. They thought they could add a little bit of Jesus to their traditions, their regulations, their self-effort. Jesus says this is not only foolish, it is destructive. You cannot take a piece of new, unshrunk cloth and sew it onto an old, worn-out garment. The first time you wash it, the new patch will shrink, and it will rip away from the old fabric, making the tear even worse than before. You not only ruin the old garment, but you have also damaged the new one by cutting it up.
The gospel of grace cannot be used to patch up a system of works-righteousness. The new life in Christ is not an add-on to our old life. You cannot simply add "be a Christian" to your to-do list, right next to "observe the traditions" and "try to be a better person." The gospel does not improve the old man; it crucifies him. The new life is a replacement, not a repair job. To try to patch the vibrant, living fabric of the new covenant onto the threadbare, shrunken garment of Pharisaical legalism is to misunderstand both. It tears the gospel from its context and it rips apart the old system, exposing its inadequacy more than ever.
This is a permanent temptation for the church. We are always tempted to take the radical call of Christ and domesticate it, to turn it into a manageable program, to sew it onto our comfortable, old ways of thinking and living. But the gospel will not be domesticated. It will either transform everything, or it will tear our neat little systems to shreds.
The Explosive Power of the Gospel (vv. 37-38)
The second parable intensifies the point. It is not just about incompatibility, but about explosive power.
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins." (Genesis 5:37-38 LSB)
In the ancient world, wineskins were made of leather. A new wineskin was supple and elastic. When new wine was poured into it, the fermentation process would release gases, and the new skin would stretch to accommodate the pressure. An old wineskin, however, had already been stretched. It was dry, brittle, and inflexible. If you poured new, fermenting wine into it, the pressure would build until the old skin burst. You would lose both the wine and the wineskin.
The new wine is the gospel. It is the life of the Spirit, the joy of the kingdom, the power of God Himself. It is a living, active, fermenting reality. The old wineskins are the structures of the old covenant as they had been corrupted by the traditions of men. They are the external forms, the regulations, the man-made piety of the Pharisees. Their religion was brittle. It was about containment and control. It had no capacity for expansion, for life, for joy.
Jesus is saying that the gospel cannot be contained by the old structures of legalistic Judaism. The life of the Spirit cannot be poured into the brittle containers of human tradition. If you try, the result is an explosion. The gospel will not be managed. It will burst the man-made structures that try to contain it. This is precisely what happened. The new wine of the gospel was poured out at Pentecost, and it burst the old wineskins of Judaism, creating a new entity, the church, which was made up of both Jews and Gentiles. The new wine required new wineskins.
This is a word of warning to us today. The church is constantly tempted to create old wineskins. We create traditions, programs, and institutions, and they are good and necessary. But the moment those structures cease to be flexible containers for the new wine of the Spirit and become brittle, unchangeable ends in themselves, they become old wineskins. And God is in the business of pouring out new wine. If our structures cannot handle the fermenting power of a genuine move of God, He will let them burst.
The Comfort of the Old (v. 39)
Jesus concludes with a poignant and sobering observation about human nature.
"And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ ” (Luke 5:39 LSB)
This is a statement of profound psychological and spiritual insight. Those who are accustomed to the old wine, the comfortable and familiar traditions, rarely have a taste for the new. The old wine is smooth, predictable, and settled. The new wine is sharp, unpredictable, and still working. The Pharisees were connoisseurs of the old wine of their traditions. It was what they knew. It was comfortable. It required nothing new of them. And so, when presented with the new wine of the kingdom, their verdict was, "The old is good enough."
This is the voice of complacency. It is the voice of all those who prefer the safety of tradition over the adventure of faith. It is the voice of every church that resists reformation and revival because "we've never done it that way before." It is the tragic epitaph of those who are so satisfied with their religious habits that they cannot recognize the Bridegroom when He stands before them. They had a religion that was good enough for them, and so they missed the God who is goodness itself.
Conclusion: Are You a New Wineskin?
This passage forces a question upon us. Are we trying to patch up an old life with a little bit of Jesus? Or have we received a new garment entirely? Are we brittle, inflexible, old wineskins, concerned only with preserving the forms of our religion? Or are we new wineskins, made supple and ready by the grace of God to receive the ever-new, ever-expanding life of the Spirit?
The new birth is the process by which God turns an old, brittle wineskin into a new one. To be born again is to be made flexible, to be made ready for the new wine. God is not interested in patching up our old self-righteous projects. He is in the business of making all things new. The question is not whether the wine is potent. The question is whether the container can hold it.
The Pharisees loved their old wine and were destroyed. The disciples were made into new wineskins, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and turned the world upside down. The choice is the same for us. We can settle for the old, comfortable, and ultimately deadening religion of human effort, or we can open ourselves to the glorious, dangerous, and transformative power of the new wine of the gospel. May God give us the grace to be new wineskins, ready for whatever He desires to pour into us, for His glory and for our everlasting joy.