City Life Starter

Written by Efe Abbe

The Word

³³ And they [the Pharisees] said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.”³⁴ And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?³⁵ The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” ³⁶ He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. ³⁷ And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. ³⁸ But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. ³⁹ And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’”

Luke 5:33-39 ESV

Reflection

The Pharisees had picked a bone with Jesus’ disciples for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” to which Jesus responded, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance”(Luke 5:31-32). Rather than humble themselves, they proceeded to essentially call Jesus’ disciples gluttons couched in a question about fasting. Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ self-righteous and blindness about the times with a parable about mending garments and storing wine the right way (v. 36- 39).

The Pharisees were all about the letter of the Law from which they spawned additional interpretive laws so much so that Jesus accused them of burdening people down without lifting a finger to help them actually fulfill the Law (Matthew 23:4). Jesus, came announcing that He was the new way of grace made available to all (including tax collectors and sinners) that actually fulfilled the Law).

With His parable, Jesus contrasted trying to be righteous by meticulous rule keeping with being made righteous by grace. Jesus was telling the Pharisees that these two ways of relating to God and others are incompatible, like ripping up a perfectly new garment to patch an old one, where neither garment looks right afterward.

If the Pharisees truly knew who Jesus was, they would have repented in humility, but they didn’t, and the second part of Jesus’ parable (v. 39) addressed their hearts’ preference for “old wine” i.e. their self-righteousness over “new wine” i.e. the arrival of the good news of the grace of God, in Jesus.

Application

Legalism is the self-deception that we can measure up to God’s holy, just, and righteous requirements in our own efforts (like the Pharisees). It might look like doing or saying the right things, having the right ideology, voting for the right party or politician, or supporting the right causes without trusting in Jesus to make us right before God. Legalism makes us proud and to hold others in contempt when we perceive they don’t measure up to us.

Jesus said He alone is the door to God’s salvation (John 10:9), the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). When we grasp this truth, it humbles us to receive Jesus as God’s gift of grace to us because we can never do enough to meet God’s standard. And because of God’s abundant grace to us in Jesus, we are able to become conduits of this grace to others, inviting them, not to rule-keeping but to receive God’s grace in Jesus (like Levi).

Prayer

Dear heavenly Father, thank You for Your abundant grace that You give to me in Jesus, Your Son and my Savior. Please help me to remain humble and to receive Your grace each day, and by Your power let it flow out to everything You have placed in my life, in Jesus’ name, amen.