Scripture Daily

Context No. 4004 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 2:17-22: in context

17When Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 18John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and they came and asked him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don’t fast?” 19Jesus said to them, “Can the groomsmen fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they can’t fast. 20But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, or else the patch shrinks and the new tears away from the old, and a worse hole is made. 22No one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the skins, and the wine pours out, and the skins will be destroyed; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins.”

Challenged about why his disciples do not fast like others, Jesus gives two vivid pictures. You do not sew a patch of unshrunk cloth onto an old garment, he says, or it will tear; and you do not put new wine into old wineskins, or the skins burst and the wine is lost. New wine belongs in fresh wineskins.

Jesus is teaching that what he brings is genuinely new, and cannot simply be patched onto the old religious forms. The gospel is not a repair to the old system of law-keeping and ritual; it is new wine, a new covenant, new life in the Spirit, and it requires new wineskins to hold it. And the picture just before it makes the point personal: Jesus is the bridegroom, and while the bridegroom is present, his companions feast rather than fast; his coming is an occasion of joy. There is something freeing here. Christ did not come merely to touch up our old religious efforts but to bring something wholly new, new life, new joy, a new relationship with God. To receive him is not to patch him onto the old self but to be made new.

Am I trying to patch Christ onto my old ways and religious efforts, or have I received the genuinely new life he brings, letting him make me a fresh wineskin ready to hold the new wine of his Spirit?

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