Mark 2:18-22--A Question About Fasting

Mark 2:18-22
English Standard Version
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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.”

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Jesus is either still at the feast with Levi or that is shortly after that event.  For some reason, the disciples of John and the Pharisees were both fasting at a certain time, but it would seem that Jesus and His disciples were not observing that fast.  This perplexed everyone because John and the Pharisees weren't close, but if they could agree on fasting for a certain reason, then it would make sense to the people that all the Jews should be fating together in unity and solidarity.

Jesus said that His disciples didn't fast because they weren't sad since they were with Him.  In fact, it would be wrong to have the guests at a wedding party observe a fast and not help to bride and groom celebrate (in their culture, the wedding was about the groom, not the bride).  Jesus hints at the fact that there will be a day not that long from now when He will be taken away from them (first this would be when He dies and is buried for three days, but then when He ascends into heaven), and they would fast in His absence.

Jesus then adds that the gospel that He is preaching is not a patched-up version of Judaism and that you can't just put the gospel into the contain of the works-based-salvation that the Pharisees were teaching.  The "new wine" of the gospel would expand and grow, but the container would not be able to handle it and the wineskins would burst ruining the wineskins and the wine.  In the same way Jesus compared this issue to cutting up a new garment (the gospel) to patch up an old garment (the legalism of the Pharisees).  The new garment has been ruined by cutting it up, and the old garment and the patch will pull away from each other and tear again and now the old and new garments have been ruined.

No, Jesus says the whole garment needs to be replaced.  We need to be dressed in His righteousness alone, and our whole worldview (the wineskins) needs to be replaced so that it can contain the gospel.  New wine can only go into new wineskins.  One of the words that we see to describe the work of the gospel is "regeneration" which is taking something dead and making it alive.  Another word is "recreation" which involves making all things new.  The Word of God accomplishes both of these things in us when we are saved.  Jesus did not come to make bad people good (for that is what the Pharisees were trying to do with their works-based "salvation" that could save no one), He came to make dead people alive. We are saved by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone to the glory of God alone, and we know about this by the Word of God alone.  (These are the five "solas" of Reformed theology.