Luke 5:35

The question comes straight out of a feast. Jesus has just called Levi, also known as Matthew, and eaten at his house with a large company of tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and scribes have complained that he eats and drinks with such people (Luke 5:27–32). The “they” who speak in verse 33 are most likely those same scribes and Pharisees. Having found fault with the company Jesus keeps, they now find fault with the habits of his disciples. Matthew records the same exchange and the same answer (Matthew 9:14–17).

To fast, nēsteúō, is to go without food for a religious reason, and fasting was deeply rooted in Israel’s devotion. The Law of Moses required one fast, on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29, Leviticus 23:27–32). People also fasted in repentance, mourning and earnest seeking of God, as Nineveh did in its repentance (Jonah 3:5–9). Devout Jews, and the Pharisees above all, added voluntary fasts of their own, often twice a week, and the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable boasts, “I fast twice in the week” (Luke 18:12). John’s disciples followed a prophet who lived simply in the wilderness (Matthew 3:4) and called Israel to repentance, and regular fasting fitted that call and their waiting for the coming Messiah.

“Make prayers” goes with the fasting. The word déēsis means a petition or request, an asking that comes from need, and prayer of this kind often went together with fasting. The two marked a person as serious about sin and earnest for God to act.

The word diatí simply means “why?” or “wherefore?”, yet in this scene the question carries a charge, because two respected groups are held up beside Jesus’ disciples as the standard. The small word dé, “but”, marks the contrast: “but thine eat and drink?” To the questioners, eating and drinking looked like laxity, the opposite of devotion. Jesus’ meals told another story. At Levi’s table he sat with sinners, and his meals showed the welcome, fellowship and joy that come with the kingdom of God. Paul later wrote that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17), and long before, Isaiah had told Israel what kind of fast God chooses (Isaiah 58:3–7). The question was about a practice, and Jesus answers it by pointing to himself.

Jesus answers with a question that answers itself: “Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?” Everyone knew what a wedding was like. It was a time of great joy and feasting that often lasted seven days, and asking the guests to fast in the middle of it would be absurd.

The phrase “the children of the bridechamber” is built from huiós, “son”, and nymphṓn, the bridal room, so it means literally “sons of the bridal room”. These are the bridegroom’s close friends and companions, whose part at a wedding is to share his joy and his feast. Jesus’ disciples are those friends, and while he is with them their place is at the table.

The bridegroom, nymphíos, is the man being married, the centre of all the joy. By calling himself the bridegroom, Jesus takes up a picture that Scripture had used for God himself. Through Isaiah the LORD calls himself Israel’s Maker and husband (Isaiah 54:5) and promises, “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:5). Hosea speaks of God betrothing his people to himself (Hosea 2:19–20), Jeremiah recalls Israel’s early devotion to God as the love of a bride (Jeremiah 2:2), and Isaiah rejoices in the salvation God gives like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding (Isaiah 61:10). So Jesus’ plain answer about a wedding is also a claim about who he is. He is the one whose coming brings the joy God promised his people.

John the Baptist had already used this picture. He called himself the friend of the bridegroom, who rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice, and he pointed to Jesus as the bridegroom (John 3:29). The disciples of John who fasted belonged to a master who had named Jesus as the bridegroom. The New Testament goes on to call the church Christ’s bride, whom he loved and gave himself for, to make her holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:25–27), and it closes with the marriage supper of the Lamb, where Christ and his people are joined for ever (Revelation 19:7–9). The joy of the disciples at Jesus’ side is a foretaste of that feast.

Verse 35 turns from the present to the future: “But the days will come.” The verb érchomai is the ordinary word for coming, and what comes is a loss: “the bridegroom shall be taken away from them.” The verb apaírō means to lift off or remove. Early in his ministry, in the middle of a picture full of wedding joy, Jesus speaks of the day he will be taken from his friends. In the setting of the Gospel this points to his suffering and death, told in Luke 22–24, and to his ascension (Acts 1:9–11). His removal is grief to his friends, and the joy of the wedding gives way to mourning.

“And then shall they fast in those days.” The word tóte means “then, at that time”, and “those days” (ekeînos, “that”, with hēméra, “day”) are the days after the bridegroom has gone. Fasting will fit them then, as the natural expression of sorrow, longing and earnest seeking of God. Jesus speaks of it as something his disciples will do, and it flows from their love for him.

Those days stretch from his going to his coming again, and in them the church is far from comfortless. Jesus told his disciples that it was expedient for them that he go away, because then the Comforter would come to them (John 16:7), and he promised another Comforter to abide with them for ever: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:16–18). So we live with the joy of his presence by the Spirit and with longing for the day he returns, the longing of the Bible’s closing prayer, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

“And he spake also a parable unto them.” A parabolḗ is a comparison drawn from ordinary life to make a spiritual truth plain, and mending clothes was something every household knew.

Luke’s wording describes a piece cut out of a new garment and sewn onto an old one, and the result is loss on both sides. “The new maketh a rent”: the verb schízō means to split or tear, and the new garment is spoiled by having a piece cut out of it. “And the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old”: the patch is mismatched, and the repair looks wrong and fails. Anyone who mended clothes also knew that new, unshrunk cloth shrinks when it is washed and pulls against old cloth that has already shrunk, so that the tear ends up worse than before.

The garment is called new with kainós, a word meaning new, fresh and unused, and the old one is palaiós, old and worn out. What Jesus brings is a whole new garment, and cutting it up to mend the old order would spoil both.

The second parable makes the same point more sharply. The “bottles” of the KJV are wineskins (askós), bags made from the hides of goats or sheep. A new skin was supple and could stretch as new wine fermented and gave off gas. An old skin had dried out and grown stiff and brittle. The “new wine” (néos with oînos) is wine freshly made and still working.

Pour that wine into an old skin and it bursts it. “The new wine will burst the bottles”: the verb rhḗgnymi means to break or burst apart. Then the wine is “spilled”, ekchéō, poured out and lost, and “the bottles shall perish”, apóllymi, which means to destroy fully, to perish or to be lost. The wine and the skin are lost together. The verb behind “putteth”, bállō, is the common word for throwing or putting.

Verse 38 gives the right way: “But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.” The word allá is a strong “but” that sets this against the losses before it. “Must be put” stands for a single Greek word, blētéos, “fit to be put”, what ought to be done. The new skins stretch with the wine, and “both are preserved”, syntēréō, kept safe together from ruin. The kaí (“and”) joins the right action to its good result.

The last saying explains why so many held back from Jesus: “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.” Old wine has finished fermenting and is smooth and mellow, and people generally preferred its taste. Someone who has been drinking it is slow to want the new, and “straightway” means at once. The word behind “better”, chrēstós, means useful, good or kind, and here it is the drinker’s own verdict on the wine he is used to.

Jesus is describing his critics. They were at home in their customs, and the new thing God was doing in Christ unsettled them. The saying is gentle and understanding, because clinging to what we know is the natural way of people. It explains the resistance Jesus met from the religious leaders of his day, and why the gospel still meets resistance from people whose old ways feel safer to them.

All of this points to the new covenant God promised through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34). At the Last Supper Jesus calls the cup “the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20). The letter to the Hebrews calls him the mediator of a better covenant and says that by speaking of a new covenant God has made the first old (Hebrews 8:6–13). He is the mediator of the new testament (Hebrews 9:15), and he has opened “a new and living way” to God (Hebrews 10:20). John sums it up: “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Christ fulfilled the old covenant and brought to completion what it prepared.

The newness reaches each believer too. God’s righteousness comes to us through faith in Christ (Romans 3:21–26). “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–4). Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus promised rivers of living water to those who believe in him, and John explains that he spoke of the Spirit (John 7:37–39). The Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24). This is the new wine, and Christ himself makes the new wineskins, hearts renewed by his Spirit to hold it.

This passage shows us who Jesus is, the bridegroom God’s people waited for, and it shows us the season we live in. His friends feasted while he was with them, and when he was taken away they fasted in longing for him. We share both. By his Spirit he is with us, and his presence is joy, and we look for the day of the marriage supper when he comes again. Feasting and fasting both belong to the life of his people, each in its season, and both are about him.

The parables show how generous his gift is. He gives a whole new garment, and new wine with new skins to hold it, so that both are kept safe. The saying about old wine shows his patience with people who are slow to taste what is new, as all of us have been. The God who promised to rejoice over his people as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride has kept that promise in his Son.