“And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.”
And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins — the wineskin parable completes the pair. New wine (still fermenting and expanding) in old wineskins (dried out and inflexible) will burst the skins as the gas expands — destroying both the container and the wine. New wine requires new wineskins that can expand with it. The kingdom Jesus brings is the new wine: it cannot be contained within the forms of the old order, no matter how venerable those forms are. The Pharisees' fasting practices are old wineskins; they are not wrong in themselves but they cannot contain the kingdom's new reality.
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