Of Old Wine, New Wineskins, Grace and Law
20th October 2005
In Matthew 9: 14-17, we have the story of the disciples of John coming to Jesus to inquire why His disciples did not fast, while those of John’s and the Pharisees did. Jesus’ answer to them, in part, reads,
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Some have taken this passage to mean that Jesus indeed has come to set up a new morality, one that surpasses the Old Testament’s law. Earlier, I argued that Jesus elsewhere taught that He was not opposed to the Old Testament Law. In fact, rather than think that Jesus has come to introduce a higher morality, or that He has come to extend the law, we ought to think of Him as doing what He said He came to do: to confirm and re-affirm the grace and mercy that was intertwined in the Old Testament Law.
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