The New Garment Cannot be Made by Patching an Old Garment

© 2014 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton))

Each new year causes us to think about new things. There are new year’s resolutions, new diets, new activities, new clothes. They all become old very quickly. Resolutions fall apart. New diets are abandoned. New activities become tiresome. New clothes succumb to style changes.

These new things often just demonstrate our age old problem of sin. Jesus said,

“No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse” (Mark 2:21).

He made this statement while responding to criticism by the Jewish religious leaders. They had established themselves as administrators of God’s Old Testament laws. Those laws were the “old garment” to which Jesus referred. God had established them as a “schoolmaster” to teach His people how sinful they were (Galatians 3:24). The sacrifices offered under those laws were pictures of Jesus, the coming Messiah, who would redeem His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Because of their inability to be righteous, they needed to know that only Jesus could save them!

The nation of Israel had long awaited their coming Messiah. Now that He had arrived, they hated Him! The Scribes and Pharisees had just asked His disciples,

“How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?” (Mark 2:16).

They didn’t understand that they, too, were sinners! Jesus had not come just to patch up or bolster their failed attempts at keeping the law. He had come as God the Son, to be the final sacrificial redeemer pictured by the Old Testament sacrifices. His final blood sacrifice would pay for the deliverance of His people from their deserved penalty of wickedness. He had come to clothe them with a brand new garment of salvation!

Those who see Jesus only as an inspiring example to help them earn salvation, are actually rejecting Christ’s offer of a new garment. They are trying to add a new piece of fabric to the old garment of the Mosaic system. Such renewed efforts can only result in more obvious damage and failure!

Will you continue trying to patch your old rags of guilt, striving to earn salvation by following Christ’s example, or will you repent, admitting you can’t do it, and cry to Him for the new garment of righteousness He offers?

 

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