FASTING AND NEW WINE
LIBERTY AND LOVE #90
Legalistic, religious rituals do not mix with a relationship based on simple trust in Jesus Christ. The parables of fasting at the wedding feast, the old fabric, and the wineskins found in Mark 2:18-22, arose out of a question about why the Pharisees and John the Baptist’s disciples fasted but Jesus’s disciples did not. It was another case of the religious leaders trying to catch him in some kind of legalistic quandary.
The Law of Moses only required one fast on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29, 31). The Pharisees added their own traditions and laws to the Mosaic law at every turn and they came up with weekly fasting. And if I understand it right, they fasted twice a week as a ritual observance. So they were questioning Jesus about why the Pharisees and John remained loyal to the legalistic traditions of the Pharisees but his disciples did not. The parables were the Lord’s response.
In the first parable, the obvious point is that you don’t fast at a wedding feast or in a time of celebration. Jesus was the Messiah, the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament (Matt. 5:17). To fast during such a time as his physical presence with them would be nonsensical. We don’t even know that the disciples of Jesus never fasted while he was on earth, because if they did, they did it privately (Matt. 6:16-18).
What we do know is that anything that his disciples did while he was there was correct. Compare this to Matthew 12 when the disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath and Jesus said, in essence, “As long as they’re with me and I give them permission, it is not wrong.” But it is also clear that to require fasting as a ritual obligation in Jesus’s mind would be akin to acting like you were at a funeral when you were really at a wedding feast.
The other parables reinforce the argument Jesus had already made and, therefore, they teach the same principle. You don’t put new fabric on an old garment, and you don’t put new wine into old wineskins. New cloth on old will make the tear worse due to washing because they are not compatible. Likewise, during the fermentation process, wine expands and will cause an old wineskin to break under the pressure. The point in all of this is legalism and ritual versus lordship and relationship. Our relationship with Christ is based on simple trusting faith, not on religious rituals. Legalism and faith are incompatible.
Dewayne Dunaway
