The parable from Matthew 9:16-17 about using new material to patch an old garment and putting new wine in old wine skins always confused me. It was explained to me that Jesus was telling the Pharisees that he was here to bring forth a new way and that it was incompatible with their old ways. Or that his new way of worship and following God would do away with the Law of Moses.

I was always dissatisfied with this explanation. Particularly when I read Luke’s account in Luke 5:36-39 with the final tag line, “No one having drunk old wine desires new. He says the old is better.” With that line the interpretation of Jesus’s new way replacing the law was nonsense.

Then I started reading and listening to the late Doctor Michael Heiser, and he said that we can’t really justify the Mosaic Law to sceptics since God meant for this world to be Eden. However, our fall made that impossible and Torah was given to ease the consequences of man’s fall. This made me recall the discussion in Luke 19:3-9 that Jesus had with the Pharisees about divorce and how God always wanted marriage to be for life. The Pharisees asked then why did Moses allow it? And Jesus said it was because of the hardness of their hearts but it was never meant to be that way.

With this in mind I then realized the true meaning of this parable. The Pharisees with their strict traditions and exactness of the law were the new cloth and the new wine. The old wine and old cloth were how it was always meant to be from when God planted Eden, and once people taste Eden they will not want to go back to Torah, for the old is better. Jesus came to bring us back to Eden where and when God walked among men in the garden He made.

#Old wine and New wine #Torah #Eden #Michael Heiser