Sally looked at the seemingly endless list of contradictory opinions and concluded that obtaining the truth was hopeless. And so postmodern skepticism claimed another victim as she become leery of anyone claiming to know the truth.
When it comes to Biblical matters, can I recognize what is reliable? Can reliability be determined by how good it sounds or how well the author writes? Is something reliable if it speaks to my life or if prescribes a solution for a problem that I agree exists?
Welcome to another game of "Spin Doctor Challenge" where you will be asked to identify a reliable interpretation. The rules are simple, first you will read “the text” and then you must decide which or if any of the interpretations of that text are reliable. Let me offer one piece of advice: one’s interpretation can not be any more reliable than one’s methodology.
The Text: John’s disciples came asking, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus replied, “Do the bridegroom's friends mourn while he is still with them? When he will be taken away from them then they will fast. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, because when the new piece shrinks the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins, because the skins will burst, the wine will be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:14-17
Option #1 - Since new wineskins are flexible, while old ones are brittle, Jesus is instructing his disciples to always stay new and flexible. The church must never become brittle by becoming hardened into rigid ways of thinking and old slogans. Rather Jesus’ disciples are to remain new, fresh and flexible. This will mean for example that they should structures as little as possible. Worship needs to be basic and simple. Jesus intended for the church to stay flexible in each new age and culture by holding just to an essential core. By doing this, it would never experience the brittle rigor mortise of simply repeating the past.
Option #2 - Just as nothing is accomplished by pouring new wine into old wineskins, so also church growth won’t occur by pouring the transforming energy of the Gospel and Christian resources into old and brittle congregations. Church growth needs to be modeled upon pouring new resources into fresh, new and flexible congregations that are capable of expanding.
Option #3 - The fact that John the Baptizer's disciples were concerned about Jesus and his disciples’ fasting habits, illustrates the truth that old and new ways do not mix well. What Jesus was doing did not fit into the wineskin of popular Jewish expectations and traditions. Nor was it what John's disciples' expected from Jesus' disciples'. Perhaps surprising to them, Jesus was not going to force his disciples to conform to those old wineskins. Jesus would pour his wine into new wineskins.
Confused? I hope not. The first two options are creative and perhaps interesting but they fail in being biblical because they do not faithfully relate what Jesus was intending to communicate because they both ignore the nature of parables and the original context. What the first two interpretations do is to simply exploit one characteristic of the parable by infusing that element with a new meaning foreign to the thrust of the context. The third option, although it is not perhaps as literarily attractive, is faithful to the context and what Jesus was communicating.
Like the Bereans, let’s not just accept something because it sounds good, but let’s search the scriptures to confirm what is reliable and what is not. Since it is easy for someone to use biblical language in ways foreign to the biblical authors intentions, some ideas may be merely biblical whitewash. To search the scriptures means to study God's word in such a way so as to grasp an understanding of God's message to us and then compare that understanding with what someone is espousing. Do not merely open the Bible to immediately conclude, "yes, the word "_____" (e.g. new wineskins, faith, baptism, foreordination, foreknowledge, salvation, freedom, grace, law, etc.) appears in scripture so the message I heard was a biblical message." Such an approach to biblical understanding is naive.
Barry Newton, Copyright © 1997, 2000