Mark 2:22

‘And no man puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perishes, and the skins. But they put new wine into fresh wineskins.'

The double illustration enforces the lesson. Old wineskins (for containing wine) have become dried out and frail as a result of the action of the wine. They have ceased to be pliable. They are thus unable to contain the action of the new wine. So if new wine is put into them they will burst and both the wine and the wineskins will be lost.

Once more the emphasis is on the fact that in this new age which was beginning, the old outward things must be done away. Many religious ideas and practises had grown up through the centuries, and as will happen to such ideas they had become old and dried up. One such idea was regular fasting. But now that the new age has come, a new look must be taken at everything. This was the time for drinking new wine, the time for rejoicing. To put that new wine into the old wineskins would destroy it and people would then be bereft of both the old and the new. They would have lost everything.

Paul had the same thought from a different perspective when he said, “if any man is in Christ he is a new creature, the old things are passed away. Behold they are become new.” For when we come to Christ we are taken out of the past and brought into a new future. Everything becomes new. And we do well not to go back to the old, and indeed must be careful not to.