Jul/Aug 2004
ONE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
New Wine in Old Wineskins
by J. Michael Feazell| Grace doesn’t come easily to us…so we run back to the law. |
Jesus was once asked why his disciples weren’t fasting like the Pharisees and the disciples of John (Mark 2:18). Such fasting was a sign of piety, sincerity and devotion to the ceremonial law, which in turn demonstrated devotion to the Law of Moses.
In his answer, Jesus made a comparison. For his disciples to fast while he was still with them would have been like pouring new wine into old wineskins—it would have been incompatible (verse 22). New wine requires new skins. The new covenant that Jesus was inaugurating was a cause for rejoicing, not for sorrow.
Today, it’s still easy to try to pour the new wine of the gospel into the old wineskins of the law.
Resisting Grace
Grace doesn’t come easily
to us. We like to have a way of measuring where we stand with God.
The gospel tells us simply
to trust God, that
he loves us and has forgiven all our sins for the sake of Christ. But
we often want something more tangible than that.
So we run back to the law. The law provides a way of measuring where we stand with God. If we avoid sexual sin, for example, and lying and stealing and murder, then we can have a firmer basis for feeling that God isn’t mad at us. If we don’t use crude language, if we don’t watch entertainment that has sex and violence in it, if we help others, if we don’t miss church and so on, then we can rest easier about our relationship with God. Of course, these are good behavior patterns, part of the way we naturally desire to live when we have fellowship with God.
But even when we’re successful in behaving well
on the outside, a deeper problem
remains. Doing good things doesn’t solve the problem of our alienation
from God. Our pride, our selfishness, the sin in our heart of hearts,
is still there. And every once in a while, when our guard is down, what
we really are inside squirts out to remind us that we’re still
sinners. Then we can either pretend we’re not really that bad,
or we can admit to ourselves what we’re really like.
Not Based on
the Law
Fellowship with God is not based on the law. It is based on God’s
faithfulness to his word of grace.
God told Israel, “I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants
of Jacob, are not destroyed” (Malachi 3:6; compare Deuteronomy
4:31). God’s free determination to do as he pleases is what gives
us a positive relationship with him. He tells us through the words of
Jesus in John 3:17: “For God did not send his Son into the word
to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He did not write, “God is justice.” If God were after justice, none of us would survive. But God has determined to dispense grace rather than condemnation. We are told, “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). How grateful we can be that God is the way he has chosen to be!
Rest
When we’re really honest with ourselves, we know that despite constant
trying, we still sin. Where does that leave us? We can either work harder
and harder to keep up the whitewashed façade of personal righteousness,
or we can turn it over to God and trust him to forgive us and make us
righteous. If we take God at his word, then we can rely on him to do
in us and for us what he says he has.
Faith gives us rest. It transforms
godly living from a duty, from a way of proving ourselves, to a joy,
to a way of taking part in the good life
we can have with God in Christ (referring not to physical abundance,
but to spiritual contentment, to the inner peace only God can provide,
which is worth more than physical riches).
Most of us can use a good rest.
— J. Michael Feazell