NEW WINE/OLD WINESKINS. HOW THE COVENANTS INTERSECT. PART I. INTRODUCTION.

In this series we will look at many of the Old Covenant types and demonstrate how they are fulfilled in the New Covenant. We must never think that just because the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New Covenant that it is unimportant. Conversely the signs in the Old Covenant are alive and well as they receive their fullness within the New Covenant anti-types. Once the proper relationship between the Old and New Covenants is grasped, the entire Bible becomes an amazing story of promise and fulfillment that keeps one thumbing through its pages with eager anticipation. So let’s dive in and look at how the two parts of your Bible hold together. In this first installment we will look at the key principle that must be understood as one tries to integrate the Old Covenant with the New.

Jesus warned that if you try to put new wine in old wineskins you will have a mess of wine all over your robe (See Matthew 9:16-17). Jesus’ point is that both new wine and old wineskins are ruined when they are forced together. What did Jesus mean by this? Certainly Jesus was speaking in metaphors and not giving a dissertation on sewing or wine storage or any other common human endeavor. Jesus is speaking in general about how the disciples should interpret His redemptive ministry. When He is with them, they should rejoice, when He is taken away, they should fast. In other words how we view biblical events is determined by where they stand in the overarching covenant scheme. The disciples of John the Baptist (Old Covenant) and the disciples of Jesus (New Covenant) will act in very different ways. This is because the Old Covenant is a shadow of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1) while the New Covenant is the essence that creates the shadow. That is, the Old Covenant is anticipatory, prophetic, and highly emblematic while the New Covenant fulfills and reveals. The Old Covenant, therefore, is incomplete in and of itself. It cannot be fully understood apart from the New Covenant revelation. The Old Covenant would be wholly unintelligible were there no Jesus.

The Old Covenant is like the old wine and old wineskins. It can stand alone in and of itself. Many Jews today read the Old Covenant and derive an entire religious system from it. It rests on the wholly consistent (but damning) Mosaic Law. It is when people try to mesh the Old Covenant with the New that interpretive problems arise. The New Covenant is the capstone of all the Old Covenant promises and must be understood through a different set of interpretive glasses. The new wine of the New Covenant is certainly connected to the Old Covenant much as new wine is somewhat connected to old wine. At the same time it is disconnected from the Old in that it cannot simply be glued together with the Old, as Jesus so aptly said. So how does the average Bible reader to put the covenants together? Over the course of history there have been three ways in which theologians have understood the connection between the Old and New Covenants.

The first method is to basically view both covenants as separate entities with their own plot line and with their own beginning and end. This approach holds a strict dividing line between the two covenants. The Old Covenant is reserved for the Jews and therefore the promises and threats attached to it are reserved for that nation only. On the other hand the New Covenant is also a separate entity and its commands and promises are reserved for the church. The histories of Israel and the church run along separate plot lines that will intersect at the end of the age. This view separates wine from wineskins completely. A second view is what I call the “add on” interpretive approach. Here the New Covenant is attached somewhat to the Old Covenant. It takes some of the Old Covenant forms and incorporates them into a New Covenant system. It is a hybrid system where the New Covenant adds important truths to the Old Covenant system while retaining much of what the Old Covenant has to offer. Thus Jesus supplants Moses as the lawgiver yet retains much of the Mosaic Law. This system looks at the epistles as new guidelines for holy living but does not negate Old Covenant principles such as the sabbath and tithing. In summary the New Covenant teaches a system of living by grace while still incorporating much of the Old Covenant law. In this scheme some of the Old Covenant types are either rendered obsolete or swallowed up in New Covenant fulfillment, while other Old Covenant forms remain viable and continuative. This type of mixing the covenants is like pouring new wine into old wineskins. The is a major fault of a system called Theonomy which we shall deal with in a later installment. The third way of viewing the interrelationship of the two Covenants is through the concept of fulfillment. That is, the entire Old Testament story - it’s histories, and poems, and prophecies - are signposts that point forward to and are fulfilled in the New Covenant realities. At this point it would be good to define what the Bible means to ‘“fulfill.” According to the Bible that which fulfills is the terminal point to which something else points. The word fulfill is used 17 times in Matthew and it always retains that sense. So, for example, Matthew speaks of Mary being with child without intimacy with a man (1:18). This event, Matthew says, fulfills that which was spoken by the prophet when he said, “Behold a virgin shall be with child and bear a Son and they shall call His name Immanuel.” According to inspired Matthew, the birth of the child in Isaiah 7:14 was a real event in history which pointed to (found its fulfillment in) something that would happen over 700 years later. The birth of the prophet’s son is not washed from history because it is fulfilled in Christ. But it does derive its importance and its meaning from the New Covenant anti-type. The best way to describe the relationship of fulfillment that exists between the Old and New Covenants is to compare it to a river which flows into a sea. The entire “goal” of a river is to flow downward into the sea. When it reaches the sea it pours itself in the sea and is fulfilled in it. But it doesn’t completely lose its identity. It remains in the sea but cannot be completely comprehended apart from it. We now turn back to Jesus’ wineskins illustration to see what he meant. Jesus said that new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins. The new wine of His revelation cannot be understood if it is held in Old Testament wineskins. Rather His coming into the world fulfills the Old Covenant types and interprets them while maintaining itself as a completely different system that refuses to incorporate Old Testament forms into its scheme.

If this relationship is property understood it will give substance and meaning to all the Old Covenant stories. This means that Jesus, the mediator of the New Covenant, is the One who brings the two covenants together. He is the object of all the Old Covenant types and is also their fulfillment. This is why when Jesus walked on the Road to Emmaus He could open up the Old Testament to the two confused disciples and explain the meaning of Moses and Prophets as they bore to Him.

To review: An understanding of the interrelationship of the Old and New Covenants is crucial toward an understanding of how the Bible holds together. First note that the two covenants are not two independent pieces of work, with two protagonists and two story lines. Also note that the two covenants are not attached to one another linearly. That is, the New Covenant does not simply finish the story of the Old so that they are read as two parts of a long novel. The New Covenant is not simply the climax to the Old Covenant story. The relationship between the two halves of your Bible is much more sublime than that. It rests on the principle of fulfillment. The New Covenant is the consummate end to which the Old Covenant points. All the stories and poems and laws in that Old Covenant flow into that consummate redemptive figure called Jesus and receive their identity in Him. In order for the old wineskins of the Old Covenant to be properly understood they must first be changed into new wineskins before they can properly receive the new wine of Jesus’ redemptive story.