In verse 17 the Lord also said, “They put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” The Greek word for “fresh” is kainos, which means new in nature, quality, or form; unaccustomed, unused; hence, fresh. The fresh wineskins signify the church life in the local churches as the container of the new wine, which is Christ Himself as the exciting life. The kingdom people are built into the church (16:18), and the church is expressed through the local churches in which they live (18:15-20). They are regenerated persons constituting the Body of Christ to be the church (Rom. 12:5; Eph. 1:22-23). This Body of Christ as His fullness is also called “the Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12, Gk.), the corporate Christ. The individual Christ is the new wine, the exciting life inwardly, and the corporate Christ is the fresh wineskin, the container to hold the new wine outwardly. With the kingdom people, it is not a matter of fasting or of any other religious practice, but a matter of the church life with Christ as their content. Christ came not to establish an earthly religion of rituals, but a heavenly kingdom of life, not with any dead religious practices, but with Himself, the living Person, as the Physician, the Bridegroom, the unshrunk cloth, and the new wine to His followers as their full enjoyment that they might be the fresh wineskin to contain Him and become the constituents of His kingdom.
We see then that the new wineskin is the church life. The church is actually the enlargement of Christ. The individual Christ is our wine within us. When this individual Christ is enlarged into a corporate Christ, that is the church. This corporate Christ is the wineskin, the container, to contain the individual Christ as our wine. Never consider the church a religion; the church is a corporate entity full of Christ, because the church is Christ enlarged.
Christ is not only our new garment and new wine, but, being increased, He is also our new wineskin to contain the wine. He is our outward qualification, He is our inward satisfaction, and He is in a corporate way the church, the Body (1 Cor. 12:12), capable of holding the wine. Christ is everything. He is the Bridegroom, the new garment, the new wine, and also the corporate vessel to contain what we enjoy of Him. The meaning here is very profound.
We need to see something more concerning Christ as the new wineskin. First Corinthians 12:12 says, “For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body being many are one body, so also is Christ.” We read in this verse not only that the members composed together are the one Body, but that this Body is Christ. We have always considered Christ as the Head; we have considered little, if at all, that Christ is also the Body. How, speaking in a practical way, is Christ the Body? He is the Body because the Body is composed of so many members who are filled with Christ. Christ is in you, Christ is in me, and Christ is in every one of us. We all have Christ within. In 1 Corinthians 1 Paul said that Christ is not divided. The Christ in you is one with the Christ in me, and the Christ in us is one with the Christ in all other Christians. Therefore, Christ is the Body composed of so many members who are filled with Him. This is the new wineskin, which is the church life to contain Christ as the new wine.
Without the wineskin, how could we keep the wine? Do not consider that you yourself as an individual are the vessel. No, you are just a part of the vessel. How can a glass contain water if it is cut into pieces? How can the pieces contain the water? It is impossible. Do not consider that you are somebody. You are nobody. You are just a member of the Body, a minute part of the Body. It is true that some amount of blood is in my little finger, but this little finger is just a part of my body. If you sever it from the body, the flow of blood in the finger immediately ceases. Instead of containing the blood, the finger will lose the blood. From the day you leave the church life, you begin to lose Christ; the new wine starts to run out. Nothing but the church life can contain the very Christ we enjoy. Never consider the church as an insignificant matter.
We must also realize that the wineskin is not only the container of the wine, but also the means for us to drink the wine. Many of us can testify that whenever we come into a church meeting, we discover that it is truly the place where we can drink Christ. It is here that we drink the Lord as never before. The church life is not merely a container, but a vessel from which we may drink. We need Christ as the new garment, we need Christ as the new wine, and we also need Christ in a corporate way as the new wineskin. We need the church life. We do not care for religion, forms, or rituals. We care only for Christ in you and Christ in me. This is the new wineskin.
At this point, I would like to say a word to the young people. The young people may say, “As long as we stay with the older ones, we will be in religion. But if we get away from them, we will not be religious.” This concept is wrong. Everything depends on whether or not the church is the enlargement of Christ. It is not a matter of age. Even if all the babes came together, they could still be in religion because they do not have Christ as their content. If the older ones are filled with Christ and saturated with Him, they are the church, no matter how old they may be. Remember that religion is something for God without Christ. But the church is Christ enlarged; it is the enlargement of Christ. And the new wineskin is Christ enlarged into a corporate expression. This is the church. The church is not something for God without Christ and without the Spirit. The church is an entity which is the enlargement of Christ and which is full of Christ. The church is filled with Christ and constituted with Christ. No matter what our age may be, we must be filled with Christ. Then when we come together, we shall be the local expression of the church. This is the wineskin. No matter how much fermenting power there is in the divine life of Christ, it can never burst the church.
Today there are four kinds of Christians. The first are called Christians, but they are not truly Christians. They are the modernists, the so-called modernistic Christians. They only take Christ as the new cloth. They say, “Look how Jesus lived: He was so full of love and self-sacrifice. We must imitate Him and follow Him.” But to do this is just to cut out a piece of new cloth with which to patch an old garment. The modernists are trying to take the unshrunk cloth of the Lord’s human living and use it to patch the holes in their behavior. But this unshrunk cloth pulls back and makes their holes larger. The modernists do not believe that Christ died for their sins on the cross, they do not believe that Christ is God, and they do not believe in His resurrection. They simply believe that they should imitate the human living of Jesus.
The fundamentalists are the second kind of Christians. They believe that Christ is God, that Christ is their Redeemer, that Christ died on the cross for their sins, and that He was resurrected. The fundamentalists receive and accept the resurrected Christ as their righteousness. They take Christ, not as a piece of new cloth, but as the new, finished garment. However, they know little of the inner life, of the inner wine. They put on Christ as the outer garment, but they do not drink Him as the wine within.
The third kind of Christian may be called the inner life Christians. They not only put on Christ as their new garment, but they also know Him as their inner life. In fact, they place great emphasis on the inner life. The inner life Christians are an improvement over the previous two groups. However, as good as they are, they lack one thing: they lack the wineskin, the church life.
The fourth are the church people. The church people are not modernists. Moreover, they are neither merely fundamentals nor only the inner life people. They are churching, because they have the new wineskin.
In the last days the Lord is recovering not only the new garment—this He recovered through Martin Luther in the matter of justification by faith. Neither is the Lord only recovering the inner life—this He recovered through ones such as Madame Guyon, William Law, Andrew Murray, and Jessie Penn-Lewis. We thank the Lord for all these items that have been recovered. However, at the end of this age the Lord is recovering the last and ultimate item, the church life. Those who enjoy the church life are the church people. Among the church people the new garment, the new wine, and the new wineskin have all been recovered. We have Christ in a corporate way as our church life. The Lord did not stop with either the new garment or the new wine. He went on from the Bridegroom to the new cloth, from the new cloth to the new garment, from the new garment to the new wine, and from the new wine to the new wineskin. After the wineskin, the church, there is nothing more. The church is God’s ultimate goal. When we arrive at the church, we are in the ultimate consummation of God’s purpose. Thus, after the wineskin, the Lord mentioned nothing else.
Praise the Lord that He is our Physician! After He heals us, He becomes our Bridegroom. He is also our garment to qualify us and our new wine to stir us up. As I see the faces of the brothers and sisters in the meetings, I can tell that they have been stirred up by the new wine. How we praise the Lord that this new wine is in His enlargement, the new wineskin. Christ is everything to us! We need to know our Lord to such an extent. He is not only our King, our Savior, and our life. He is also our Physician, and this dear Physician is our lovely Bridegroom. And this Bridegroom becomes our garment, our new wine, and eventually the wineskin. We are now in the wineskin, in the church life, enjoying Him to such a high degree. Hallelujah for Christ and the church!