Mark 2:18–22 (ESV)
A Question
About Fasting
18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s
disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 19 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom
with them, they cannot fast. 20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. 21 No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.
If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 22 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are
the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
Jesus stresses that the time of
fulfillment has arrived, and thus totally new ways of thinking and acting are in order. In our own lives, the same dynamic is at work. It will not do simply to patch some little bit of the Gospel onto our existing lifestyle and expect it all to hold together.
Thankfully, the Lord offers such surpassingly great promises that the old is made obsolete. That is what Paul meant when he said, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2Co 5:17).
I pray: Lord, so fill us with the surpassingly great promises of Your Gospel that we count all else as loss for the greater hope of attaining
eternity with You. Amen.[1]