New Cloth & New Wine

Parable #1 — Matthew 9:16 — New Cloth Patch on an Old Coat “No one sews a patch of 16 unshrunk [new] cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.”

 

Parable #2 — Matthew 9:17 — New Wine in Old Wineskins 17 “Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Wineskins would stretch with new wine being put in as it continues to ferment, and then they would harden. If new wine was put into a hardened wineskin, the continued fermentation risked bursting the skin. Similarly, new cloth would be expected to shrink considerably, so using it to patch already-shrunken cloth would be asking for problems.

None of us likes to give up something familiar or comfortable. This is even more true when this “something” has been the controlling point for our view of reality, morality, and religion. So we have a tendency to plug in something we like in a new experience or religion into our old religious context and make it fit.