Cloth and Wineskins – Luke 5:36-39 [context Luke 5:33-35]

One day some scribes and Pharisees were speaking with Jesus and His disciples.  They asked why Jesus ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners.  Jesus responded that He came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance.  After all, the righteous do not need to repent, do they?  Of course, Jesus is effectively calling them out on their own self-righteousness.  They did not think they needed Jesus, so why would He bother with them.  On the other side, sinners and tax collectors(probably hated more then than even now) did need to repent, so Jesus went to them.

Next, they asked Jesus why the disciples of John the Baptist, as well as the disciples of the Pharisees, fast, yet the disciples of Jesus eat and drink(i.e. they were not fasting).  Jesus answered them, stating that the friends of the bridegroom do not fast while the bridegroom is still there.  By this, He meant that when the bridegroom is at the party, people celebrate(eat and drink) instead of fasting.  And since Jesus(the bridegroom) was still there, His disciples would continue to eat and drink(not fast), but after Jesus left(i.e. died), then they would fast(symbolic of mourning).

The disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were living under the Law of Moses(as were Jesus and His disciples).  Fasting was something that people could do under the Law of Moses; however, Jesus pointed out in Matt. 6:16-18 that some people were making a show of fasting, trying to draw attention to themselves.  Effectively, they were saying to anyone who would listen, “Look at how righteous I am!”  Jesus told people that when they fasted, they should not try to look like they were fasting, but instead they should look normal.  Fasting was a dedicated act to God, so others did not need to know about it.

The disciples of Jesus could have fasted, but why would they fast when they had Jesus with them?  It is into this context that Jesus told a parable about a piece of cloth and a wineskin, both illustrations effectively telling the same message.  But first, let’s look at what Jesus said.

Jesus said that no one takes a new piece of cloth and sews it onto an old garment.  Why would you do that?  First, you ruined the piece of new cloth because you had to cut it out of a larger piece of new fabric.  In addition, after you sew the new piece on the old garment, then wash that old garment with the new patch, the new piece that was attached will shrink and tear the old garment, making the old garment even worse.  Why would you do that?  Instead, you would get rid of the entire old garment and make an entirely new garment.  You might say, “Out with the old and in with the new.”

Jesus then made the same point using wineskins.  In ancient times, people would use the skins of animals to make holders for water and wine.  Over the course of time, the skin would get older and stiffer.  If you were to take new wine and put it into an old wineskin, the fermentation of the new wine would create expansion, and whereas a newer wineskin would have some stretching ability to accommodate that expansion, an old wineskin would not.  As a result, putting new wine into an old wineskin would cause the wineskin to rupture, destroying both the wineskin(because it burst and was now useless) and wasting the wine, as it would now be spilled on the ground once the wineskin burst.  Why would you do that?  You would ruin perfectly good wine and at least a somewhat useable wineskin(it could be used for older wine that had already fermented).  Instead, if you had new wine, you would use a new wineskin for that new wine.

All of this is something the people of that time knew and understood.  We don’t really do much of either of these things today, so the point Jesus is making is not so obvious to us today.  We need to figure out what they already knew.  So now that we know what they knew, what was the point Jesus was trying to teach?

What Does It Mean?

Leading up to this parable, the scribes and Pharisees were effectively asking why Jesus’ disciples were not acting like the disciples of other teachers who were teaching according to the Law of Moses.  The answer to the question is quite simple.  Jesus was teaching something different from the Law of Moses.   Jesus was NOT saying that there was anything wrong with the Law of Moses.  He was not saying it was a bad law.  Instead, Jesus was bringing something the Law of Moses could not offer . . . forgiveness from sin.   Jesus’ teachings were not going to be a “patch” on the Law of Moses.  Just like you would not put a patch of new fabric on an old garment, Jesus was not going to put a new patch on the Law of Moses.  He was ushering in an entirely new Law.

In addition, Jesus was not going to pour His new message into old-way-of-thinking people.  He was going to put His new message into new-way-of-thinking people.  This is what He meant by not putting new wine into old wineskins.  Jesus would not put His new Law into Old Law thinking people.  He wanted them to think differently.

Takeaways

Here are some basic things that we can learn from this parable.

Christianity is not a patch on Judaism, or anything else for that matter. 

We do not follow the Law of Moses(Col. 2:14; Heb. 8:6-14), and then just add some other stuff to it.  Jesus brought an entirely new Law. 

We do not have to keep the Law of Moses with all it’s requirements.  This does not mean that we should ignore it.  The Law of Moses teaches us a lot about God and what He values, so we should definitely read it and understand it.  But we do not live our lives based on it.

We need to avoid being like the Pharisees – a group that followed laws(which was good), but who added to them.  They taught the traditions of men to be of equal value to the Law of Moses(Matt. 15:9).  The Pharisees should not have done this then, and we should not do it today.

We need to be a new kind of person(like a new wineskin).  We need to listen with our soul, as well as our ears.  We need to think spiritually, not physically(like the Pharisees).

If we try to just add to the Law of Moses, we will make a ruin of both the Law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus.  Both are good.  The Law of Moses served a purpose, teaching us about sin and leading us to Jesus.  But if we try to combine them and follow both, we will ruin the intended effect of each of them.

We need to follow the teachings of Jesus(the new garment) and only His teachings.  This does not mean that we ignore everything in the New Testament after the Gospel of John.  Jesus said that He send the Holy Spirit to remind them of things they had already been taught, AND the Spirit would also teach them new things(John 16:12-15).  That is part of the reason we have Romans through Revelation.

The Wrap

There are a lot of people in the religious world who want to live by the Ten Commandments or keep the Sabbath.  Those are part of the Law of Moses, which is a Law that we do not keep under Jesus.  He freed people from the Law of Moses.  We do not have to follow the dietary restrictions or avoid wearing clothes with mixed fabrics(Deut. 22:11).  We do not have to worry about being ceremonially unclean(Lev. 15).  We do not need to perform animal sacrifices.  The list goes on and on.  We have Jesus.  We are supposed to follow Him.  We are supposed to love Him and keep His commandments(John 14:15).  That is what we do.  That is who we are.  So let’s be that person.  Let’s be that disciple.