Wineskins verse?

[Katieboo]

I am very confused by the verse about the wineskins -- do not pour old wine into new wineskins/new wine into old wineskins. I do not seem to understand its meaning. Could someone please explain it to me? Apologies if this is appropriate somewhere else.

[GordonSlocum]

Wine skins were used as containers.

New skins like most new natural products have moisture content.


Over time a wine skin hardens.

Perhaps you have see leather that was soft and after it became wed and dries it hardens.


This is the principle spoken of about the wine skins.

So, for the people of that day to preserve the wine for drink later they had to use new skins. If they used old skins the fermentation of the liquid ,fresh grape juice, would cause the skins to break and the wine of course would be lost.


The illustration of the old skins and the new is compared to the Law as the old skin and the new covenant as the new skin and wine.


Grace does not fit into Law if that will help.

Grace and Law do not agree with each other.

Old skins and New wine are not compatible either.

[Katieboo]

Thank you! And happy belated birthday. :)

[jcright]

I haven't heard Gordon's take on this before. Interesting.

Here is a note someone had sent to me when I asked the very same question. I won't post the whole thing, just a part of it. Let me know if you'd like to see the rest.

"Again, the cultural understanding of wine-making comes into play here. If you take new wine, when they would put it into the leather skins, it would ferment. That process would cause the skins to expand (basic science of fermentation). If you emptied one of those skins and tried to do another batch, the skins would expand and burst, because they can't stretch any further. Christ came to fulfill the law, and in so doing, it meant doing things not the way that the Jewish system had set up, but the way God wanted - in the heart. It wasn't just adding more on to the Jewish system (patching something old with something new), it was reforming it, making it completely different."

[FallingWaters]

Find Adam Clarke's commentary online. He has an awesome explanation of this- sorry I'd do it for you but I'm late for an appt.

[JPPT1974]

The law was in the Old Testament times
While Grace and mercy is extending in the
New Testament times through Jesus Christ!

[FallingWaters]

I am very confused by the verse about the wineskins -- do not pour old wine into new wineskins/new wine into old wineskins. I do not seem to understand its meaning. Could someone please explain it to me? Apologies if this is appropriate somewhere else.I have heard this verse taught several times in my life, but never did it make as much sense as Adam Clarke's commentary-

"New wine into old bottles—It is still the custom, in the eastern countries, to make their bottles of goat skins: if these happened to be old, and new wine were put into them, the violence of the fermentation must necessarily burst them; and therefore newly made bottles were employed for the purpose of putting that wine in which had not yet gone through its state of fermentation. The institutes of Christ, and those of the Pharisees, could never be brought to accord: an attempt to combine the two systems would be as absurd as it would be destructive. The old covenant made way for the new, which was its completion and its end; but with that old covenant the new cannot be incorporated..."

[underline mine]