New Wine

"When a person sews a patch over a hole on an old coat, he never uses a piece of cloth that is not yet shrunk. If he does, the patch will {shrink and} pull away from the coat. Then the hole will be worse. Also, people never pour new wine into old wine bags. Why? Because the old bags will break. The wine will spill, and the wine bags will be ruined. But people always pour new wine into new wine bags. Then the wine and the wine bags will continue to be good." (ERV)

None of us likes to give up something familiar or comfortable. This is even truer when this "something" has been the controlling point for our view of reality, morality, and religion. So we have a tendency to plug in something we like in a new experience or religion into our old religious context and make it fit. Jesus' point here is that what he brings cannot be made to fit in the old order and old forms of religion with which they were familiar. No, to do that would be destructive to both the old and the new. What Jesus brings is new, fresh, and transformational. It will rip apart anything that tries to force it into another way of doing, perceiving and experiencing. The Kingdom Family is God's way of doing life, not just another religion to be thrown into the world mix of faiths.

I’m convinced that so much of the intense consternation unsettling so many that are being awakened to the taste and reality of this new wine, Christ in you the hope of glory, is because of what is shared in the above thoughts!
It describes (and without revelation this to is but mere words) this One who has invaded our lives as such; “For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.”

This Prince of Peace (Heaven) has not come into the believers life to bring peace, but a sword, and that sword, His word, is in direct opposition to anything that tries to make Him fit in as an add-on to what they all ready know!
Without the inner transformation, the renewing of the mind the reality of Whose we are will be nothing more than intellectual titillation.

Rich