“New wine”

Read Luke 5:36-39 

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Jesus has just declared that the Old Testament religious practice of fasting no longer has much relevance for those who follow him (5:33-35). This was a shocking statement to Jewish ears and so he drove home the point with a short parable that illustrates the impossibility of his teaching being stitched on to the old, or of being contained within it (36).

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The way of Jesus was not something that could be added on to the Jewish system, or inserted into it (37-38). Jewish ritual practice was turned on its head by him e.g. he “declared all foods clean” (Mk.7:18-23). This was the problem that the early church struggled with, for the first Christians were all Jews who still maintained many of their old religious practices (Acts 11:1-2; Gal.2:4,11-14). The new wine of Jesus could not be contained in the water jars of Judaism (Jn.2:6-10). 

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Only Luke adds the further saying related to old and new wine (39), which points out that many of the Jews were not even willing to try the new wine brought by Jesus. They were so sure that their religion was good that they were not interested in listening to Jesus, to “taste and see” if in fact the new wine might be better (Jn.2:10; Ps.34:8).