Matt 9:17 Neither do they put new wine into old wineskins.but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved. 1 Cor 12:12 For even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.
Old wineskins signify religious practices, such as the fasting held by the Pharisees in the old religion and the disciples of John in the new religion. All religions are old wineskins. They attempt to squeeze Christ into their different modes of religious ritual and formality. The kingdom people should never do this. They must put the new wine into fresh wineskins. Because the new wine is filled with fermenting power, if you put it into an old wineskin, the fermenting power of the new wine will burst the old wineskin. We see then that the new wineskin is the church life. The church is actually the enlargement of Christ. The individual Christ is our wine within us. When this individual Christ is enlarged into a corporate Christ, that is the church. This corporate Christ is the wineskin, the container, to contain the individual Christ as our wine. Never consider the church a religion; the church is a corporate entity full of Christ, because the church is Christ enlarged. We read in [1 Cor. 12:12] not only that the members composed together are the one Body, but that this Body is Christ. We have always considered Christ as the Head; we have considered little, if at all, that Christ is also the Body. He is the Body because the Body is composed of so many members who are filled with Christ. Christ is in you, Christ is in me, and Christ is in every one of us. We all have Christ within. The Christ in you is one with the Christ in me, and the Christ in us is one with the Christ in all other Christians. Therefore, Christ is the Body composed of so many members who are filled with Him. This is the new wineskin, which is the church life to contain Christ as the new wine.
Bible verses are taken from the Recovery Version of the Bible and Words of Ministry from Witness Lee, Life-study of Matthew, pp. 342-345. Both are published by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA. Please visit us at www.emanna.com. Send comments to: [email protected].
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