Whosoever...

Thursday, May 19, 2022




Be of good cheer.

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.  Mark 2:22


No man puts new wine into old wine-skins; else the wine will burst the skins, and the wine perishes, and the skins: but they put new wine into fresh wine-skins. 

The reference is to the custom of using leather bottles, made of skins, for carrying wine, and to the fact that new wine, by its increasing fermentation, would burst "old skins," which were already stretched, or worn thin by age.

So, as Jesus suggested, it would be impossible for the old forms and ceremonies of Judaism to contain the spirit of religion as taught by Him.  Christianity cannot be comprehended by any system of rites and observances, it cannot be bound up by any set of rules and requirements, it is not to be confused with any ritual.

Its very essence is a new life, imparted by faith in Christ; it controls men, not by rules but by motives; its symbol is not a fast, but a feast, for its pervasive spirit is joy.  If Christianity was to have any forms, they must be new; the followers of Christ could not be bound by the fasts and other observances which had been invented or multiplied by Jewish formalists and Pharisees.
The Gospel of Mark - Charles R. Erdman

N.J. Hiebert - 8855        
 






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We love him, because he first loved us.   
1 John 4:19

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