22 Apr 2026

New Cloth and New Wine

Steve Copland

I. Introduction.

In this series we will be studying the parables of Jesus as closely as possible to their chronological order. There are about forty parables within the gospels, and they vary slightly at times, so we will also look at those parts which different authors omitted in order to get the whole picture. We will also examine each parable within the context that Jesus spoke so that we understand His audience and the message He was conveying. Every story takes place within a context, a culture, and Jesus' parables are no exception.

Often, His audience was extremely varied in terms of attitude, purpose and social standing. In any given audience were a group of disciples, a crowd of curious onlookers, people who were there to see a miracle, or receive a miracle, and those of the highest Jewish social order, the teachers of the law, Pharisees and Sadducees who were initially curious and suspicious, but grew to be hostile, aggressive and eventually violent.

Many of Jesus' parables have messages for every person in His audience, and often those messages were subtle, or just as often, purposely direct. No one ever spoke as Jesus spoke; He knew the hearts and minds of His listeners, He understood their needs, their desires and their agendas.

As we study the teaching of Jesus we must remember one fundamental fact. Jesus was no ordinary teacher, rather, He spoke the very words of our Creator. He was God the Son, the Creator of all that exists, the One who set aside His divine authority and submitted to the Godhead as a vulnerable human being. He came to reveal God to us, to rescue us from the curse of death, and take the sins of the world upon Himself. With this in mind, we begin with Jesus’ parables about new cloth and wine.

II. New Cloth and New Wine.

Mathew 9:16-17, Mark 2:21-22, Luke 5:36-39

36 He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the old patch from the new will not match the old. 37And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'"(Luke 5:36-39)

Biblical scholars recognize that both Matthew and Luke borrowed much of their gospels from Mark which was written first. I have used Luke's version above as it contains one extra sentence which neither Mark nor Matthew mention, namely verse 39 about no one wanting new wine after drinking the old, a verse we will discuss later in the study.

III. Context.

The context of this parable, like all of Jesus' parables, is essential to understanding the parable itself. This time is very early in Jesus’ ministry, but He has already come to the notice of the general public and the official religious rulers of Israel. At this stage He had healed a man with leprosy, a thing believed only God Himself could do. He has also healed a paralytic and said ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’, a statement that caused a great deal of concern among the Pharisees, for only God can forgive sins (Luke 5:22).

So, by this stage, Jesus has performed a miracle considered to be exclusively divine, and made a statement considered to be exclusively divine. No wonder then, He had already popped up on the Pharisees' radar as a potential threat or false prophet. But the next thing He did shocked everyone. He called a tax-collector, Levi (Matthew) to follow Him as a disciple.

And furthermore, Levi invited Jesus to his house for dinner, a house where ‘sinners’ and tax-collectors gathered to party and associate with others of their kind. Tax-collectors were despised in Israel as they collected money for the enemy, the Romans. They were both formally and informally excommunicated from being Israelites on account of being traitors, and usually, dishonest. No respectable Jew would associate with them, and certainly never enter their house for a meal.

So here is a man who has just done two divine acts, entering the house of a tax-collector and sitting down for a meal with people of disrepute. If Jesus had had a publicity adviser at this stage, this person would have been pulling his hair out. Indeed, He did have a self-appointed publicity adviser later in His ministry, namely Judas Iscariot, but more on that later.

The Pharisees asked Jesus disciples why He was eating with such people, and on hearing the question Jesus told them,

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."(Luke 5:31).

Here, in essence, was a subtle challenge to the Pharisees. They were not interested in saving sinners, rather, they excommunicated them and excluded them from the temple and any relationship with God. In their understanding of Judaism, the religion they supposedly governed, only the righteous could come to God, and they decided who was righteous. Levi had thrown a party to celebrate the fact that Jesus was offering salvation to both he and his friends, a group who saw themselves as ostracized, hated and rejected by their own people. Jesus had kindled hope.

The Pharisees then questioned Jesus about fasting. They explained that John the Baptist and their own disciples often fast and pray, but yours go on eating and drinking (Luke 5:33). Jesus answer is important to understanding the parable which immediately follows.

34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast." (Luke 5:34-35)

Jesus’ answer sets the tone for the parables He is about to speak. He is the bridegroom, and if the bridegroom was here, then a wedding was going to occur. No one fasts at a time of celebration, and Jesus, the bridegroom, had come to invite sinners to the wedding of the Lamb, to salvation in Him. In calling Himself the bridegroom, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, albeit in a subtle way, and therefore, He was saying that the Kingdom of God had arrived, the New Covenant is almost here.

Understanding the context, now we can study the parable.

Jesus uses two everyday analogies to make a spiritual point. These days, manufacturers use pre-shrunk materials when producing clothes, often materials which have a large synthetic content. In Jesus’ day the most common materials were cotton and wool, both of which shrink significantly when first washed. If one uses new wool or cotton and sews it into an old garment, as soon as it is washed the new material shrinks and makes a larger hole than the original hole.

Likewise, new wine was never put into old wineskins. Winemakers used goat or sheepskins to store new wine. These new skins were soft and flexible. As the new wine fermented it expanded and the soft skin stretched. But old wine skins had no flexibility, therefore, if new wine was put into an old skin, during the fermentation process the skin would burst open under pressure and the wine spilled out.

Jesus point is simple: The old is not compatible with the new. But Jesus was making a spiritual point, not giving a lecture on sewing or winemaking, but speaking of two covenants. Remember the Pharisees original question, and criticism, regarding Jesus eating with sinners, and then that He and His disciples did not fast. The Pharisees had turned the old covenant of the law into a system of rules, of do's and don'ts. Moses had instructed that the Jews fast once a year on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16, 23:26-32), but by the time of Jesus the Pharisees commanded that all Jews must fast twice a week (Luke 18:12).

For the Pharisees, salvation was extremely difficult and entirely up to the willpower of the individual. As a result, Judaism had become a religion of hypocrisy and pride. If you couldn't make it you faked it (hypocrisy), and if you convinced yourself, as the Pharisees did, that you were righteous, your heart became full of pride and self-righteousness. A person in such a state of pride considered themselves to have already gained salvation by their own works, and such people would never accept the new covenant of grace.

And this helps us to understand the final sentence of Jesus; And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'" There are several points to be made here. Firstly, when Jesus says 'after drinking the old wine', He means a person who is convinced that he has conquered the demands of the old covenant and made himself righteous by his strict obedience to his interpretation of the law. Such a person cannot accept that salvation is solely by the grace of God as he wants to be seen for what he has done, not what is done freely for him.

This point is perfectly illustrated in Jesus’ parable of the two men who went up to the temple to pray from Luke 18:9-14. It begins with the words, ‘to those who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else’. A Pharisee stood in the temple and prayed about himself, comparing himself with others and listing his good deeds. A tax-collector stood with head bowed in deep conviction saying, ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner’. Only the tax collector left the temple justified before God because ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’. One man compared himself with those he considered beneath him, and the other compared himself with the holiness of God.

Furthermore, in regards to new and old cloth and wine, there was within Jewish and Roman culture deep suspicion for any new idea, especially within religion. Romans prided themselves on their piety, indeed they often printed this word on their coins, and 1st Century Jews were convinced that the old ways, given by Moses, were the best way. The expression, 'the old is better' was used by both groups to express the longevity, and therefore, authenticity of their religious practices. Jesus used the analogy of old wine because this analogy was often used by those who insisted on the proven antiquity of their religion.

And there are two other extremely important points which are only fully explained after the Day of Pentecost when the new wine was poured out. Firstly, the new wine refers to the new covenant in which the Holy Spirit is poured into those who trust in Christ alone for salvation, apart from the law. God does not pour the new wine into an old vessel so how are people made new. This is what Jesus meant when He said we must be born again. But in order to be reborn, the old must die. How does that happen? The Lord taught that we must deny self, take up our cross and follow Him, trusting in Him alone for salvation and prepared to leave our old life behind. The Apostle Paul referred to this experience as being ‘crucified with Christ’, and that we ‘died with Christ’ so that we are a ‘new creation’. If there is no death to self, there will be no rebirth.

In the same way we cannot tack new cloth onto the old garment. In reality, this is a form of diluted counterfeit Christianity. The person who has never died to self or who wants Christ only as a Savior whilst rejecting His Lordship over their lives, is not born again. It is the Lord Himself who regenerates people, who gives them new life, and we are called to receive Christ as Lord (Colossians 2:6).

Furthermore, the old and new cloth analogy goes both ways. There are those who try to add law to grace, insisting that Christians must keep the old covenant laws, or at least some of them, in order to have salvation. In essence, this is destroying the new cloak with a piece of an old cloak and being left with a covering which is grotesque. Paul confronts this in his letter to the Galatians. Those he calls ‘Judaizers’, were insisting that all believers must be circumcised. Paul rebukes them in the strongest language and tells them they have fallen from grace and that if they allow themselves to be circumcised, Christ is of no value to them.

IV. Summary.

In these first two parables of Jesus we witness the fundamental differences between the teachings of the Pharisees and the Lord. It is important to understand that Jesus was never diminishing the importance of the Law, but rather beginning to help His listeners to properly understand the purpose of the Law. For the honest and sincere person, the Law revealed our slavery to sin and God’s standard of holiness. Such people were like the tax collector in the temple, grateful for God’s grace and forgiveness, and justified through sincere repentance. For those who were self-seeking and self-righteous, the Law multiplied their pride as they judged themselves, not by God’s standard, but by comparing themselves with those they considered less holy or disciplined.

Jesus' teachings always had but one purpose, namely, that salvation comes solely from the grace of God and that no person can be justified before God on the basis of their works, for these two are completely incompatible. This is not to say that works are not important, they are, but works are the fruit of salvation, not the means of salvation.

The Pharisees had made themselves, and their strict interpretation of the Law, the benchmark for who was saved and who was excommunicated and, therefore, beyond salvation. Jesus was demonstrating that true salvation had arrived because He, the Savior had arrived, and although all were invited to salvation, only those who humbled themselves would receive it. The old covenant was coming to a close and soon would be completely obsolete (Hebrews 8:13), but more so, the new covenant could not be attached to the old, for in the new covenant there can be no hint of salvation by our own standard of works.

God bless