The Lord used four new things to illustrate one thing: Christ and the church. The disciples of John and the Pharisees asked a simple question about fasting and praying. By answering them, however, the Lord revealed something profound, marvelous, and eternal! He unveiled the mystery of God. The Lord spoke such simple parables, yet they contained all the main points of God’s mystery and God’s eternal purpose. They were short illustrations concerning four new things, but they contained the mystery of Christ and the church.
Therefore, we see that after the four cases in chapters one through four of Matthew, chapter nine shows us the proper way to be with the Lord Jesus in the New Testament service; that is, there should always be something new. Something new of the Lord should continually fill us and be expressed through us. We should wear the new garment, drink the new wine, and have the new wine in the new wineskin.
In the mentioning of the four new things in Matthew 9 and Luke 5, three different Greek words are used that are sometimes translated into the one English word “new.” In the original language, “new cloth” means cloth that is untreated, undressed, unshrunk; “new wine” means wine that is new in time, wine that is freshly made; and the “new garment” and the “new wineskin” are new in nature. The wine is new in time, and the wineskin is new in nature. The church life is the new wineskin; it is absolutely new in nature.
We need to be so much up-to-date with something new in time and also absolutely new in nature. I do believe that now is the time the Lord will do something new and up-to-date among us. What the Lord will do will be different in nature from all the things that are old, and it will be the expression of Christ as the new wine in the new wineskin. How much we need to realize that we are hindered by the old teachings! Perhaps those teachings have helped us in
the past, but many times what has helped us in the past is the very thing that frustrates us from going on in the present. On one hand, we appreciate the old things that have helped us, but on the other hand, we should be willing to drop them for something new. We need to remember the principle that all those who have been drinking the old wine will say that the old is better. Therefore, we should pray, “Lord, be merciful to me that I may forget the old and be so willing to go on with You in newness.”
I am afraid that some of us are still stuck to the old things. We have received so much help from them that it is hard for us to forget them. However, those are the very things we need to forget. The Lord Jesus is not old; He is always new in time and new in nature. He is an up-to-date and ever-present Christ, a Christ always new in nature, completely different from the old things.
We need to be clear that the New Testament service is always outside of religion, having nothing to do with the old system. If we try to take something of the Lord Jesus to fit our old religion, we are using the new cloth, or the new garment, to patch our old garment. By the Lord’s mercy we need to drop the old garment and put on the new garment, and we need to put the new wine into the new wineskin. Then we will have Christ in the church. Christ is the new wine, and the church life is the new wineskin. It is not a matter of religion, not something old, but a matter of the proper church life, something so new in nature for Christ to dwell in.