Repentance Lived Out
Mark 2:22
Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
I come from the era before shredded jeans when Mom would keep darning socks and patching jeans until I outgrew them. Old jeans were either patched or became patches for she couldn’t patch with new fabric or when stressed, the patch would be stronger than the older fabric and would result in a greater tear. I have talked to vintners who have made wine in skins and they confirm today’s passages that in the wine-making process, new grape juice must be put into new wineskins because the fermentation process produces expansion which will tear old, rigid containers while new wineskins have the flexibility to go through the change and continue to contain the fermenting wine.
As alluded to in an earlier devotional, traditionalists had difficulty with Jesus and His followers not practicing their traditions.
Matthew 9: Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.1
MARK 2: Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.2
Side note: the Gospels often record similar but different events for Jesus repeated His messages and similar circumstances happened multiple times as in these two quotes. ‘Disciples of John came’ and ‘people came’; ‘can the wedding guests mourn’ or ‘can the wedding guests fast’ are not contradictory of the same occurrence but quotes of similar but different occasions.
These passages are about the appropriate responses to the situation—in this example wedding guests while the bridegroom is with them. Jesus then turns the application into an even more practical example that everyone could grasp:
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” 3
The ultimate application wasn’t to sewing or wine-making but to the change that comes with repentance, the turning from our own old ways to God’s newness for our lives. It was never the intention of God for fallen humans to get by through will or concentration or intention or anything else we brought forward into this point in our lives. It’s all about the newness that the LORD creates as the Apostle Paul wrote,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.4
It is such a good thing to live forward in Jesus in ‘newness of life’ leaving behind the old and going forward in the new. Thank You, LORD!
All Scripture references from the Blue Letter Bible, ESV
at https://www.blueletterbible.org
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
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