LUKE 5
Chapter 4 ends with a reference to “the glad tidings of the kingdom of God”. The kingdom of God is something quite new; we cannot read anything about it in the Old Testament save prophetically; the thing itself was not there. The New Testament opens with the statement that it was at hand, drawing near. There never was such a joyful kingdom as the kingdom of God; its character is set forth in “new wine” — wine richer and more precious than any wine known on earth; it is indeed “good wine”. It was said of the men at Pentecost, in derision, that they were “full of new wine”, but it was true spiritually; many a true word is spoken in derision. The Lord wants every one of us to be full of new wine. He came into this world to secure it, and Luke 5 shows how He secures vessels to contain and preserve the precious grace which He has brought here from heaven.
The coming of the Lord in this gospel is to secure three things; glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good pleasure in men. That is what God desires and He started out to secure it by bringing in one Man in whom He has completely found good pleasure. God is working to bind us up in our affections completely and effectually with that one Man so that we may become objects of pleasure to His heart — that He may have pleasure in us as He has in Christ. In chapter 4 we have one beautiful Vessel capable of bringing down to men in this world all the grace of heaven — all the grace of the heart of God. In chapter 5 we have presented a number of vessels all made suitable to hold the new wine — all filled out of the one beautiful Vessel. That gives a wonderful idea of the kingdom of God.
At the beginning of this chapter they press on Him to hear the word of God. But we find that preaching and hearing are not sufficient; there must be a work of God in the souls of men to bring about the formation of new vessels. That is what we see illustrated here. The Lord preached and people [p. 73] heard, but, in addition to that, a work of God was accomplished in the soul of Simon Peter — a sovereign movement which was, no doubt, figured in the number of fish brought into Simon’s net. A movement under the surface brought all these fish into Simon’s net. It was a sovereign movement of God, for there were no fish there before; they had tried all night and caught nothing. The thought is suggested that God was going to work in the souls of men so that there should be something taken out of the mass of mankind for His pleasure.
The first element in the formation of a new vessel is conviction of sin. It was a new kind of conviction of sin which no sinner who ever lived in this world had had before. No man had ever before been convicted of sin in the presence of Jesus, and that made all the difference. He fell at Jesus’ knees, because along with conviction of sin there was a mighty power of attraction. Now it is attraction that holds people; conviction of sin is the net in which God catches people, but, it says, “their net broke”. It could not hold what was caught. Their “net” represented what they were conversant with; that is, the ministry of the law and the prophets. That might convict people but it would not hold them for God; there was no power of attraction in the law and prophets — no inherent power to hold men for God — but there is a power of attraction about Jesus which will hold men for God. That is the kind of conviction of sin that belongs to Christianity; men are convicted deeply of sin, but the consciousness is brought into their souls of the marvellous power of attraction that there is in Jesus; that holds them for God. The old divines used to talk about the difference between legal repentance and gospel repentance, and there was a good deal in it. Suppose a man stood under mount Sinai with its thunder and lightnings, and heard the terrible words, “die without mercy” — that man might be convicted of sin in terror, but that is not the kind of conviction of sin that God gives to men today. A man might realise that he was, as it were, standing over the pit of hell and ready to drop in in a minute, but that is not the kind of conviction that God gives people today. There is a new kind of conviction of sin which belongs to the kingdom of God, the new system of divine grace. In chapter 4 Jesus is the Preacher and the Deliverer, but in chapter 5 He is the Bridegroom. In the end of chapter 5, when the Pharisees asked Him why His disciples ate and drank while the disciples of John fasted,
[p. 74] He answered, The bridegroom is here, everything is new now. Even conviction of sin has a new character, different from what any one had before. Simon Peter fell down, but it was at Jesus’ knees. He was as near to Him as he could get; the power of attraction was great in His heart. That is the kind of conviction of sin that God gives people now; they feel their utter unfitness for Jesus and for God, but at the same time they are filled with the sense of how exceedingly suitable Jesus is for them.
The gospel of Luke is the divine disclosure of the personal charm of Jesus, the heavenly Bridegroom. “The charm of a man is his kindness”, Proverbs 19: 22. There is no more beautiful word in Scripture, and we might say that it describes Luke’s gospel. Here is a man so convicted that as to his own consciousness there is not a spot of anything in him but sin; he is a sinful man; and yet he is attracted by the divine charm of kindness in Jesus, so as to be drawn to His very knees. That is the first element in the formation of new bottles. There is the deepest conviction of our own unfitness and sin but there is no discouragement or remorse in it because we learn it in the presence of the personal charm of Jesus — the attractiveness of the Bridegroom. Repentance and remission of sins are to be preached in His Name — that is the end of Luke — we are to set forth repentance and remission of sins in all the personal charm of the Name of Jesus. It makes us love God when we know that is the way He has taken, to know that He has brought in such a wonderful Person. I do not wonder that these people were astonished; there was only astonishment left in their hearts. Think of the charm about One who was personally delightful to God as His beloved Son; we see His charm in that character in chapter 3. Then we see in chapter 4 the charm of One who was untouchable by the devil, and the charm of the anointed Preacher who could fully set forth the grace of God to men, and then the charm of the Deliverer who can relieve us of every power of evil and every infirmity. Now in chapter 5 we see the charm of His kindness to a man convicted of sin. Then the Lord says to him, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men” — He takes Simon into partnership. One like that is qualified to catch men, because he can present something very attractive; he can speak of the charm of Jesus. If we knew that charm better we should use it more on others.
[p. 75] This chapter puts together for us carefully and methodically the different elements that go to make up new bottles. The first new element is conviction of sin in the presence of Jesus. But this does not do all that is needed; it awakens the necessity in the soul for a divine cleansing, not merely what will satisfy our consciences, but what will make us suitable to God. We have now a new kind of cleansing. There had never been a man before to whom a leper could come and say, “Thou canst make me clean”, but this leper comes and says to Jesus, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean”. What an apprehension he had of a new order of things — a Man on earth able to cleanse lepers so that they should be fit to approach God!
This leper says, “Lord, if thou wilt”. What a beautiful spirit that is! He had learnt what the men in the synagogue of Nazareth refused; they refused divine sovereignty, but this man had learnt to submit to it as the way of blessing. If we submit to divine sovereignty we find it ten thousand times more favourable to us than we ever thought. It is God’s sovereign pleasure to bring about a cleansing that is perfectly suitable to Himself. That is what God proposes; not simply to cleanse us so that we can get into heaven without a charge and have some lone seat within the door, but to make us as fit to be presented before Him as ever any holy angel was, and even more than that, for it is a cleansing that could only be brought about by the death of Jesus. Could there ever be anything more wonderful than that? Jesus effects cleansing for us through His own death. It was in the death of Jesus that He really and sacrificially touched the leper. It was the pleasure of God to cleanse us so effectively that not the keenest priestly vision — not even His own holy eye — could detect a single trace of leprosy; all pollution is completely gone. The Lord went to the cross to do that. The charm of His kindness alone would not meet the case, He has identified Himself with our sinful state; He has touched us; He has been made sin for us. Such is the value of the death of Christ that for us who believe on Him there is not a trace of defilement left under the eye of God. “I will: be thou clean” is the word of the cross. That word rings down through the ages from Calvary. “I will: be thou clean” is a new kind of cleansing altogether; it is not merely ceremonial cleansing such as an Israelite might have by observing the rites and ordinances of [p. 76] the law. It is a new kind of cleansing which makes us spotless in the presence of the holiness of God, all secured by the death of Jesus.
Then the Lord said to him, “Go, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing as Moses ordained”. Think of this man taking his two birds, cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop, and his lambs and fine flour and oil as presented in Leviticus 14, and going to the priest! Everything that he offered speaks to us of the Person who cleansed him. What instruction there is in the things which he offered! The two birds, one killed and the other dipped in the blood of the dead bird and let loose in the open field, speak of Christ going into death and coming out in resurrection. Then the cedar wood, scarlet and hyssop declare the greatness and glory of Christ as Man. The cedar wood speaks of His excellent bearing, the scarlet of the glory of man as seen in Christ, and the hyssop suggests the lowliness of the One who came down to the lowest point to meet sinful men. The leper had in type all that before him; it should fill our souls with adoring thoughts of Christ. We can look at it and say, All that is for me; it is in the value of that holy Person going into death that I am cleansed; my soul is in adoring liberty in presence of the perfection of Christ, who went into death to secure my cleansing according to divine holiness and to set me up in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is not a question of what I need to relieve my conscience, but of the marvellous character of the cleansing that has come in by God’s Son having become a Man, presenting in Himself every feature of human excellence and perfection, and giving it all in death, so that in the excellence and virtue of that I am cleansed. It is not only a negative removal, but the bringing in of the blessed perfection of Christ so that we are set free to offer Christ before God.
The cleansed leper went away with the blood on his ear, thumb and great toe. Think of his walking out into the world with the sense that he was to hear everything, do everything, and make every movement in the sense of the marvellous character of his cleansing! He was cleansed by a Person who came out of heaven, having every perfection that was suitable to God in a Man, but who went into death as a sacrifice for sin to secure a cleansing for sinful men that would leave them as spotless as He is in the presence of God. The cleansed leper had the blood on his ear, his thumb, and his toe, and he had [p. 77] the oil on the blood, and then he had all the rest of the oil poured on his head. The cleansed leper had a dignity in Israel that attached to no other person save God’s anointed priest and king. He went out as an anointed man.
This new kind of cleansing altogether surpasses any cleansing that men might have had in the Old Testament; it is a cleansing which can only be measured by the Person who effects it. Such is the value of the death of Christ that, if the full blaze of the light of God were to shine on the believer, not a single spot of sin would be discovered; he is cleansed.
There is a significant break in the chapter at verse 16: “And he withdrew himself and was about in the desert places praying”. It seems to intimate the completion of what He had to do in connection with the exposure of sin and its cleansing. The exposure of man’s state of sin and divine cleansing were not all that divine grace had in view, and the Lord withdrew Himself, I would suggest, to pray in regard of the further thoughts of God for men. It is deeply interesting to think of the blessed Son of God as entering into all the thoughts of grace, and praying that these thoughts might be fully secured in men. If there are to be new bottles for the new wine, there must not only be a new kind of conviction of sin and a new cleansing, but there must be a new power. Men are marked by weakness, but one of the great thoughts of God for men is that they should be characterised by power instead of total incapacity for good, so that men should be able to walk here to the glory of God.
We see in this section a paralysed man. It is not only true that we are sinful and need cleansing, but we are utterly incapacitated and without strength. This is another opportunity for divine grace to disclose itself. I do not think it is too much to say that the power which was present to heal, and in which the paralysed man stood up and walked, was the answer to the prayer of the Lord Jesus. There is not one of us here who has not felt the need of power, but suppose we start at the divine side. Long before I felt the need of power, Jesus felt it for me, and long before I prayed for power, He prayed for power for me. His praying brought the power of God into that house, and into that paralysed man. Power is always in answer to prayer, but let us not forget the prevailing efficacy of the prayers of Jesus. Whatever need I may become conscious of, I may be assured that there is not one of those needs that [p. 78] the Lord Jesus has not felt and taken up in intercession for me. How it draws one’s heart to Him!
We come, in figure, here to the gift of the Spirit; power lies in the gift of the Spirit. It is the thought of divine grace to set us up capacitated for good. Naturally we are marked by utter weakness for what is good, but the thought of divine grace is to set us up in power by the gift of the Spirit. Now the gift of the Spirit comes in answer to prayer: “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much rather shall the Father who is of heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” And the Lord said to the woman of Samaria, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him and he would have given thee living water”. But, while taking account of that, let us not forget that the Spirit is given in answer to the prayer of the Lord Jesus, the blessed Son of God. He said, “I will beg the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, who shall be with you for ever”. The gift of the Spirit is the answer to the prayer of Jesus, just as the power that came to this paralysed man was in answer to the prayer of Jesus. That is the Person we know through the infinite grace of God — a living Person now in heaven who has prayed that we might have the Holy Spirit as power.
Power in the creature must be dependent power; God would never give power to the creature to make that creature independent of Himself. The Spirit as power is dependent power, and even the gift of the Spirit is seen to be in answer to prayer, which is the expression of dependence. The paralytic man was entirely dependent, because he came as brought by others; he was brought by men who had the faith of what was available. The whole case as taken up by Jesus and the men was marked by dependence. There was the prayer of Jesus and the faith of the men, and the result was that the man became energised and characterised by a power that was of God.
There is not a thought of God in grace in regard to me that the Lord Jesus has not taken up in an intercessory way with God, and it is on that ground that we get every blessing. That brings in a very attractive element; it makes the Lord Jesus attractive; we begin to see something of His character as Bridegroom. This chapter is leading us on by stages to the knowledge of Christ as Bridegroom, One who holds everything for God in the power of affection, and in a personal charm that [p. 79] becomes attractive to everyone who comes to know Him. He is the great attractive centre of God’s universe, and all this leads up to a company being secured who are “the sons of the bridechamber”; they find charm and satisfaction in the Bridegroom.
They were not conventional in the way they went about what they had in hand, but they got the man to Jesus, and that settled the whole thing. That is what we want; many of us may read our Bibles and pray, but do we get to Jesus? These men got the man to Jesus, though I dare say they shocked the doctors and Pharisees by the way they did it. There is always a way to Jesus round by the top. The Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by would represent the unprofitableness of the old legal system. They could only sit by as the priest and levite in chapter 10 passed by. Power comes in by Jesus and on the principle of faith and dependence.
The power of the Spirit is given so that the walk of the saints may be a living testimony to the disposition of God’s heart towards men. It is not merely that we may have power to get through, but that there may be a testimony in this world to the forgiveness that is in the heart of God for men. The need has been fully felt by Jesus; none of us have sufficiently felt the need, but He has. The One who is our Lord, our Head, the Bridegroom, has felt the need, so He says, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”. It is as much as to say, That is the great point in the testimony of God at the present moment. “Thy sins are forgiven” is God coming out in forgiveness. The rising up and walking of this man were to be a testimony to the fact that there was a Man on this earth making known the disposition of the heart of God in all its blessedness. God’s heart was being uncovered to man, the guilty sinner. What was God doing? He was in Christ reconciling the world. There is forgiveness in the heart of God; in spite of all I have done His heart refuses to hold anything against me. The Lord seems to say, This question comes first; you must know the disposition of God’s heart towards you. It is a wonderful moment when we learn the disposition of God’s heart towards us. If we get a sense of it we shall understand that He will not leave us without power to walk for His glory. If He regards us so tenderly, if that has been His attitude and disposition, He will not leave us without power, but then He says, The power I give you is to be a [p. 80] witness to the disposition of My heart. We do not think enough of the forgiveness of sins. People think of it as elementary, though we do not find it in Romans save in one quotation from the Psalms. But in Colossians and Ephesians we find it. That God is righteous in justifying is prominent in Romans, but forgiveness is the tender disposition of the heart of God. We do not find in Romans such a verse as “Be to one another kind, compassionate, forgiving one another, so as God also in Christ has forgiven you”, Ephesians 4: 32. I find forgiveness in the very heart of the blessed God. Forgiveness is the disposition of the heart of the person offended; it is how he feels. God glories in forgiveness; it was in His heart before it took form in Christ. The point here is not so much the meeting of man’s need, but that the great heart of God must have an outlet. Our sins, our weakness, everything there is with us, are from the standpoint of Luke, opportunities valued by God and precious to Him because they give Him an opportunity of making Himself known to us in the marvellous fulness of His grace. It is not merely that I, the sinful creature, need God, but God needs me; He needs me in my sinfulness, my weakness, all my moral disorder as a fallen creature, in order to express in me the unsearchable riches of His own blessed grace. That is the presentation in this wonderful gospel.
God has introduced the charm of Jesus into this world — a Person attractive with all the grace of heaven. He is the Bridegroom, the joy-giver; He fills with ineffable satisfaction and delight every heart that knows what it is to be drawn into companionship with Him. Now we see the same power of attraction exercised in the case of Levi the publican to give him an entirely new interest. Self-interest is the very centre of a man naturally, but a power of divine grace in Jesus came in to deliver Levi from self-interest and to give him a new interest centred in Jesus. So along with a new kind of conviction of sin, a new kind of cleansing, and a new power, we find a new interest brought in to govern us in every way.
The word to Levi was “Follow me”. Jesus was, as the following verses show, the Bridegroom, the centre of interest and happiness. It is grace coming in to set men free from all self-interest, so that they may be attached in affection to a new centre and object. Many people are not marked by gross evil, but by the fact that their whole lives are governed by self-interest. That will not do for the kingdom of God; it [p. 81] will not do as a feature of the new bottles. We find a new interest connected with Jesus as the Bridegroom. The Lord says, “Follow me”.
Levi became a true Levite as having been drawn into the communion of grace; that is what characterises “sons of the bridechamber”. It suggests a new interest which has superseded and displaced the self-interest that was there before. This new interest centres in Jesus as the Bridegroom. His interests and His joys become the interests of the sons of the bridechamber. Each of them has left his own interests to become identified with the interests of Another. This is as far as the figure takes us. We do not find the bride in the gospels. We have the friend of the Bridegroom, and virgins going forth to meet the Bridegroom, and the sons of the bride-chamber, but we do not see the bride. There cannot be a bridegroom without a bride, but the bride is hidden in the gospels; we do not see her.
The work of God as illustrated in this chapter culminates in men having a new interest connected with Jesus in the character of the Bridegroom. The title of Bridegroom sets Him forth as the Person who is the centre of interest and happiness. Whatever other interests the disciples may have had, they were all set aside by a new and commanding interest which centred in Jesus as the Bridegroom. Everything was there that was of grace and of God, and it had come in to be the source of unalloyed happiness. The Lord moved through a certain orbit when He was here, and all the grace of heaven shone out in Him. The sun is compared to a bridegroom in Psalm 19, and is no doubt a figure of Christ in that character. He is spoken of as rejoicing, and His joy was to bring in and express all the grace of heaven. We do not think enough of the profound joy that God has in His grace, but it has been fully known and expressed in a Man, in Jesus, and He calls us to Him that we may participate in it. The joy of God in forgiveness is far greater than our joy in being forgiven. It is a far greater joy to God to cleanse us in all the efficacy of the death of Jesus than it is for us to be cleansed. It is a greater joy to God to set us up in the power of the Spirit than it is for us to have the power. The joy of God in grace is set forth in the Bridegroom, and He would have us as His companions in the joy of grace. This is the new interest that belongs to the kingdom of God.
[p. 82] Levi answered to the call of Jesus, and he made an entertainment for Jesus — not for the tax-gatherers and sinners. He ministered to the joy of grace in the heart of Jesus; that became his new interest. He knew the kind of company that would give joy to the One who was setting forth God as supreme grace. That the tax-gatherers and sinners who came in enjoyed the feast is certain; but Levi made the great entertainment for Jesus; he knew that He would like it. He was a true son of the bridechamber. He had great appreciation of the divine joy which was set forth in Jesus, and it had become his new interest. Do we really know the charm of Jesus in this way? He has called us by His own attractiveness away from self-interest to be dominated and characterised by an entirely new interest. Is it true that Jesus has become the Centre of interest to us? He has brought all the grace of heaven for men. Have we apprehended and understood it, and do we participate in the joy which He has in doing so? Then we can in the communion of grace think of the need around us, but in doing so we think of Him, of His joy in grace, and of how we can minister to it.
Paul speaks of himself as “carrying on as a sacrificial service the message of glad tidings of God, in order that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit”. He says, as it were, I am going to bring them all in for the pleasure of God. That is what gives an entirely new interest that belongs to the kingdom of God. Everything takes a new character, so that what Levi had providentially became an opportunity for him to give expression to the grace of heaven. The chief use of money is that — though in itself the mammon of unrighteousness — it may be used in such a way as to give expression to the grace of heaven. It is the privilege of the saint to let his new interest be manifest first in his own house. The paralysed man was sent to his house that his new power might be first in evidence there, and Levi made a great entertainment for Jesus “in his house”; the new interest came out there in a very practical way.
We see here in this fourth incident a man in communion with the grace of heaven, fully furnished to meet need because in the sense of full supply as having understood the grace that was there in the Person of Jesus. He regarded everything from that standpoint, and brought his guests together to minister to the joy of the Bridegroom, not merely that they might be [p. 83] blessed. It is more to the Lord that we should be near to Him and in communion with Him in that way than any service we could render. He has many angels He could send to do great things, but no angel knows the Communion of grace as those know it who have been sinful creatures; angels can look on and wonder at it, and learn their God in it, but they cannot be in the communion of grace as the sons of the bridechamber are. Levi saw a blessedness in Him that overpowered every bit of self-interest in his soul. His heart unfolded to the Bridegroom “as the rose to the golden sun”. That is what I would like Jesus to be to me, an overpowering influence to displace every bit of self-interest. It is on that line that God is working.
The more we know the festivity of grace which has come in by Jesus as the Bridegroom, the more deeply we shall feel the state of a world which has rejected Him. Fasting comes in here, verse 35. It is not that the grace has diminished, but it has been rejected. The Bridegroom is taken away, so that feasting now is connected with heaven where He is accepted, and fasting with earth where He is still rejected.
Verses 35 - 39 contain what is probably the first of the Lord’s parables. It impresses on us the entirely new character of what has come about by the presence of Jesus in this world. It suggests the divine pleasure to invest man with a garment which is altogether new and complete in itself, and which is of a different kind from anything that men ever wore before. The old garment represented all that was provided for men in Judaism under the old covenant. Men had been wearing that garment for fifteen hundred years, but God had said by the prophet Jeremiah that days would come when He would “consummate a new covenant as regards the house of Israel, and as regards the house of Judah”, Hebrews 8: 8. The comment of the Spirit of God upon this is, “In that he says, New, he has made the first old; but that which grows old and aged is near disappearing”, Hebrews 8: 13. The old garment did not meet man’s case, for it did not bring in righteousness or salvation; we are told it made nothing perfect, and it did not disclose the mind and heart of God. God found fault with that old garment. The system of things with which God had been pleased to invest Israel — the law and the sacrifices, and the order of service that belonged to the tabernacle and temple — while it contained a shadow of good things to come,
[p. 84] did not bring the substance of anything. The new garment implies that God would set up man in an entirely new way before Him, and it is a complete unit to be taken in its entirety; we must not tear a piece out of it to add to the old. There is a new garment which is never going to be old; and which provides a complete and satisfactory covering for men, and satisfaction for God in the men who wear it. Something has been brought in of a different kind from anything proposed in the law. The coming of Jesus into manhood, His going into death, His going on high and giving the Spirit, result in an entirely new garment being provided, no part of which can be added on to the old one. To tear a piece out of the new garment is to spoil it, and it does not suit with the old. Present Christianity as we see it around us is very, largely Judaism with Christian terms imported into it; they have torn a piece out of the new garment, and tacked it on to the old, but it does not fit. No part of a system of things which does not recognise man in the flesh at all can be added to a system of things that was suited to man in the flesh.
There are two things in this parable — the system as set forth in the new garment, and men of a new kind figured by new bottles. Neither the old covenant nor men in the flesh who were under it were satisfactory to God, so He has brought in an entirely new system of blessing, and secured man after a new kind to suit the system which He has brought in. Both the new garment and the new bottles give pleasure to God. It pleased God to invest Israel with everything connected with the old covenant so that things might be tested and that it might be brought to light whether such a system and such men as there under it could abide for the pleasure of God. It was demonstrated that they could not so abide, and the system had to be set aside for the weakness and unprofitableness of it. The epistle to the Hebrews tells us it was weak and unprofitable, and that it did not make the comers thereto perfect. It did not bring in perfection for men or pleasure for God. So God had to speak of something new, and that implied the discarding of the old. Now there is a new garment. God has brought in what is connected with the revelation of Himself in grace in His beloved Son, and the perfect work of the cross, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to men, and He would invest men with the knowledge of this.
The scribes and Pharisees were wearing the old garment,
[p. 85] and though they were able in measure to understand the fasting of the disciples of John, they did not at all appreciate that by the coming in of Jesus there was a new garment and new wine; they were not able to understand the unmixed joy which characterised the disciples of Jesus as sons of the bride-chamber. The Bridegroom being here, everything was new and of a changed character. There was a new garment, new wine, and new bottles. The Lord says, as it were, You are going on with what is old, with a system of things which for God is past, but I and My disciples are in the joy of what is new and for the pleasure of God. The new wine is the joy of God in His grace communicated by the Spirit to the heart of the believer.
The great truth of the gospel is that God needs man. There is no gospel in saying that man needs God, but to know and be able to say that God needs man is glad tidings. God must have men to display upon them the exceeding riches of His grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Man’s state is God’s opportunity to come out in the wealth of the grace of His heart, and pour Himself out in immeasurable blessing. He finds joy in doing it. The knowledge of that in the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit is the new wine. We are told in Acts 13 that the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Paul says, “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” — that is new wine. Luke brings out in a very blessed and attractive way that God has lost what is of great value to Him and He must have it back. God would make Himself known in His thoughts, His heart, and His disposition of grace. It was a necessity to God to make Himself known in grace, and man, a sinful creature, was needed in order that He might do so. People often ask, Why did God allow sin to come into the world? He did so because only in relation to a sinful creature could He disclose the marvellous depth, riches and fulness of His great grace and the love of His heart.
It needed the Son of God to come from heaven to tell us that God needs man. In Luke 15 we have the shepherd, the woman and the father — it is God seeking man. Think of the light and blessedness of all this being available to every one of us! It is noticeable that this gospel is addressed to one man, It is as much as to say that God is prepared to confer all that is disclosed in this gospel on one individual; it is open to [p. 86] every one of us to take this gospel of Luke in all its fulness as personally addressed to us by the blessed God, that we may know Him in grace. He makes no demand; He bestows everything; He confers on men everything that they need, and everything that will disclose what He is in grace. As to the pollution that belongs to man as sinful, God has met it through the efficacy of one sacrifice for sin that has completely and for ever removed it from before Him. Sin in the flesh has been condemned in the death of God’s Son; purgation and cleansing have been effected in all the value and power of the death of Christ. Believers are now in the light of that; it is what God Himself has brought in; we are perfected for ever in the value of the work of Christ. That is the character of the system we belong to: there is perfect revelation of God in grace, perfect cleansing from sin, and also power conferred by the Spirit. God’s ways are characterised now by the ministry of righteousness and the Spirit. The old system served out death and condemnation, but the new system serves out righteousness and life. It is impossible to mix the two; one is a system of demand and the other a system of supply.
The last clause of the chapter is a solemn reminder of how easy it is to lose the taste for what is new. If I drink old wine, I shall lose my appreciation for what is new. If I read an interesting book of the world and get absorbed in it, because it appeals to my natural likes and tendencies, I find it diminishes my power to appreciate what is new. I desire to maintain in my soul appreciation of the new, and I believe that is more to God than any service I can render. Old wine belongs to the old system. How soon the Galatians were turned aside from the new wine to the old! They had been connected with the new system of heavenly grace and had known the new wine, at any rate in some measure, for Paul referred to their “blessedness”. But they had become occupied with circumcision and law-keeping and observance of days and all those things that were really connected with man in the flesh. They drank old wine and liked it and for the time lost their taste for the new. Satan works that way, not exactly to bring in what is sinful or that might give us a bad conscience, but to turn us back to what is really “old”. The whole system of current Christianity is marked by what is old and, if people go in for it, they cannot enjoy what is new. Music at religious services is brought in, not because it pleases God but because it appeals to and pleases [p. 87] men; it has the character of old wine; it belongs to a system that God has discarded. Many things in the Old Testament were introduced because God was putting to the test whether things adapted to man in the flesh could bring about what pleased Him, but they entirely failed to do so. If people go in for those things, one cannot expect them to have much taste for new wine. At the present time the religious world is largely laying itself out to provide something that will attract and be agreeable to man as after the flesh — things often borrowed from the Old Testament without any idea of their spiritual import. We must cultivate acquaintance with what is new — the whole system of heavenly grace which centres in Christ as the heavenly and glorified Man, and which subsists in the value of His death, and is known in the heart of the believer by the gift of the Spirit.
The new wine requires new bottles, which do not represent the system but the persons who stand connected with it. There must be a new kind of person to appreciate divine grace and to be a vessel to hold the joy of that grace. Luke 5 shows the features which characterise new bottles; they are marked by four features — a new kind of conviction of sin, a new kind of cleansing, a new power, and a new interest. These things put together give us the moral features of a new kind of man, and in result there are suitable vessels to contain and preserve the new wine. If we are not supremely happy there is a reason for it. Old wine gratifies the flesh, but self-gratification and happiness are two quite different things. Old wine represents legal principles, but what is proposed in Luke’s gospel is that God’s joy in grace should be a spring of joy in our heart perpetually by the Spirit; then there will be new wine in new bottles.