GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
MARK 2:21-22
21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the patch shrinks, the new tears away from the old, and a worse tear is made. 22 No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will pour out, and the skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into new wineskins.”
These two illustrations will be incomprehensible if the reader adopts the point-of-view that the preservation of the old cloth or the old wineskin is to be preferred. The point is that new cloth is for new clothes, and new wine is to be poured into new wineskins.
Before it can be used, wool needs to be combed or carded, a process called fulling that effectively pre-shrinks the cloth for use. However, the illustration is valid for other types of fabric, so that the idea of a new patch ruining and old garment generally holds up. Wine is no longer made in most homes, nor in the old way of using animal skins, but the fermentation process causes pressures to build up which would burst an old wineskin. An animal skin will stretch, but once it’s been through the process, it will not hold up a second time. Therefore new wine was poured into new skins.
Therefore: mixing new cloth (such as a patch) with an old garment will just tear the old garment, and pouring new wine into an old wineskin will burst the container. Professor Lenski’s summary is excellent: “A little of the new is worse than useless to preserve the old. Discard the old entirely and accept not merely a bit of the new but all the new in its completeness. Not a new patch but a new robe” (The Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel p. 121).
Faith and grace cannot be combined with the old Pharisaical laws of obedience and righteousness by works. Nor can salvation by faith in Christ alone be combined with the laws of Moses, since those laws looked ahead to Christ. That would be like saying to someone in line to see a movie: “I’m going to just stay out here in line, anticipating the movie, while you go in. We’ll both benefit, even though I only have the poster and you get to see the movie.” The poster was meant to draw people in to see the film, and the Laws of Moses were meant to prepare people for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. To hang on to the old without acknowledging the new is the same as rejecting the new, the Savior, and the salvation he brings.
Christianity cannot stand hand-in-hand with Judaism, nor with Islam, nor with Mormonism, nor with any other of the world’s religions. Nor can true Christian faith be mixed with any versions that add in righteousness by works, making good deeds or a good life necessary to achieving salvation. In any case, Christ (the new cloth, the new wine) will tear apart or burst through the other.
What about the Old Testament?
Sometimes Christians get the idea that the Old Testament has been made obsolete, is entirely replaced by the New Testament, and therefore should not even be read. This wasn’t the point Jesus was making. We should not abandon the Old Testament or leave it out of our regular reading and study of God’s Word. Without the Old Testament, the hundreds of illustrations that the New Testament makes to Old Testament people and stories would make no sense at all.
Luther wrote about all of this in his Preface to the Old Testament, which first came out with his translation in 1523:
“There are some who have little regard for the Old Testament. They think of it as a book that was given to the Jewish people only and is now out of date, containing only stories of past times. They think they have enough in the New Testament and assert that only a spiritual sense is to be sought in the Old Testament… But Christ says in John 5:39, ‘Search the Scriptures, for it is they that bear witness to me.’ St. Paul bids Timothy attend to the reading of the Scriptures [1 Tim. 4:13], and in Romans 1:2 he declares that the gospel was promised by God in the Scriptures, while in 1 Corinthians 15 he says that in accordance with the Scriptures Christ came of the seed of David, died, and was raised from the dead. St. Peter, too, points us back, more than once, to the Scriptures.
They do this in order to teach us that the Scriptures of the Old Testament are not to be despised, but diligently read. For they themselves base the New Testament upon them mightily, proving it by the Old Testament and appealing to it, as St. Luke also writes in Acts 17:11, saying that they at Thessalonica [Berea] examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so that Paul was teaching. The ground and proof of the New Testament is surely not to be despised, and therefore the Old Testament is to be highly regarded. And what is the New Testament but a public preaching and proclamation of Christ, set forth through the sayings of the Old Testament and fulfilled through Christ?” (LW 35:235-236)
With regard to the Testaments, cherish both! With regard to the way to heaven, remember that the Old Testament is merely the waiting line; the New Testament displays the Event.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Mark 2:21-22 The Old and the New