The New Creation . . .

NEW WINE AND FRESH SKINS

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on to an old coat; for then the patch tears away from the coat, and leaves a bigger hole. Neither do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then wine runs out and the skins are spoilt. No, you put new wine into fresh skins; then both are preserved. (Matt 9:16-17)

Any man with a new idea is a problem and has a problem. He is a problem because he is asking people to make changes that threaten the status quo. People are uncomfortable in the face of something new, especially when it questions long-established traditions. He has a problem because it is so difficult to sell something new in the market of men’s minds. In this passage Jesus is talking about the problem of a new idea, His own idea of what the kingdom of God is all about.

Human history could well be described as the story of the struggle of new ideas. Columbus had quite a time with his idea of a new world across the seas; Galileo was scorned and ex-communicated for his idea of gravitation; Copernicus was forced to retract his view that the universe is sun-centered rather than earth-centered; Pasteur may have delivered man from much of the danger of the mad dog through his research in bacteriology, but in his own day he himself was considered mad because of his innovative thinking; even the idea of a fresh translation of the Bible has had to struggle against the prejudices of a closed mind. Thus the history of progress is closely related to the history of ideas.

Jesus is not here renouncing His Jewishness, nor is He rejecting Judaism as such. It was proper for the old wine to be in the old skins, and He did not want the skins lost by taking in the new wine. The old system had served its purpose, and it was a matter of the old yielding to the new. There was no way to fuse the new with the old, so the old had to go, insofar as justification is concerned. The new cloth and the new wine represent the new spirit of the kingdom of God, and there is no way to inject the new spirit into the old system. Some of John’s disciples and the Pharisees had some such idea, for these words from Jesus were prompted by their concern for fasting.

It is the taste of this new wine that we all need today. The cup is often denied us by the same kind of fallacy and confusion that Jesus was seeking to dispel in giving this homely illustration. They all knew back then, before the days of Sanforization, that no one could sew a piece of new cloth into an old garment and get by with it, for the new cloth would shrink and tear the garment. So with new wine: it would break the old bottles because of their inflexibility.

It is not only a problem of confusing the new and the old that the Master is talking about. It is a matter of confusing grace and works. It is the dreadful fallacy of supposing that Jesus’ mission was to take away one law and lay down another. He was indeed “the end of the law,” to use Paul’s language, but he was not the beginning of another law. God did not nail the old law to the cross, and then turn around and through the Christ give mankind still another law. It was not a matter of law begetting law, but a matter of the law serving as a tutor who was to deliver us to a Person, who was the very essence of grace. “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,” is the apostle’s description of the Lord’s coming. “The Law was given through Moses, while grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” John 1:17 tells us.

The new wine is the gift of a Person, not a book of laws. It is the faith, hope, and love that makes the heart glad, not a system of works that motivates fear and uncertainty. It is the intoxicating Spirit of God that assures the believer that all is well with his soul, not the paralyzing influence of rules of do’s and don’ts that both scare and starve the soul.

This taste of new wine makes one a free man in Christ. One such free man could say in Heb. 13:9: “It is good that our souls should gain their strength from the grace of God, and not from scruples about what we eat, which have never done any good to those who were governed by them,” and in Romans 14:17 we are told: “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but justice, peace, and joy, inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

These are the values that starving disciples of our day are longing for: strength, goodness, peace, joy, inspiration. We are learning the hard way that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The Master invites us to drink the new wine with Him: “Here I stand knocking at the door; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sit down to supper with him and he with me” (Rev. 2:20). To sit with Jesus can be just as real and personal to any of us who thirst for such a warm communion as it was to the early disciples.

The new wine is ours to drink as we drive along the highway, compose a letter to a friend, meet a new acquaintance, or deal with a delicate problem at work. “For indeed we were all brought into one body by baptism, in the one Spirit, whether we are Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free men, and that one Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink” (1 Cor 12:13). What a neglected truth that is: the Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink! And we are urged to drink until we are intoxicated! (Eph 5:18) When we drink deeply of what Jesus has to give, we will never again be thirsty (John 4:14). That is the passage that speaks of Jesus providing for us “an inner spring always welling up for eternal life.”

The scriptures also speak of “the wine of God’s wrath, poured undiluted into the cup of his vengeance.” Mankind thus has a choice of wines, and what a pity it is that the vast majority, including even those who profess Him, choose never to open the door and allow Jesus to become a meaningful reality in their lives.

We have had enough of the old skins of obscurantism, institutionalism, schism, and all the rest. We are sick and tired of hearing the same old bromides and cliches that never did more than to tickle the ears of our forebears. We long for the fresh skins, the new contexts in which the story of Jesus moves creatively into the twentieth century. This may be in a coffee house in the inner-city, in bull sessions on a university campus, a street corner in Harlem, prayer gatherings in a private home, or a basement Bible class at a big city congregation.

The fresh skins that Jesus speaks of are the honest and good hearts that hunger for truth, wherever they may be found. The new wine of Christ’s love is thus to be poured into the fresh skins of suffering humanity, and not to be identified with an institutionalism that has long since grown cold to anything spiritual. The new wine of the Holy Spirit fills the true body of Christ, which is not to be identified with the institutional form of religion. Any effort to relate the new wine with such old skins will be futile. It is time for us to throwaway the old bottles of our own religious pride and sectarian partyism, and ask God to create within us a new heart that will be receptive to His indwelling.

The old prayer of David is in order, for it is a call for new wine in fresh skins:

Create a pure heart in me, O God,

and give me a new and steadfast spirit;

do not drive me from thy presence

or take thy Holy Spirit from me.

There are three kinds of people: creators of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture.—Hitler