“Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.”
Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. The new wine of the kingdom — living, fermenting, expanding — will burst the rigid old wineskins of the established religious structure. The old wineskins are not condemned as worthless but as insufficient containers for what the kingdom brings. Luke 5:39 adds a sardonic note: no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, the old is good. The resistance to Jesus' movement is partly the preference for what is already known and established.
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