Jesus New Wine Old Wineskins Explained
Just as Jesus taught, the fermentation of justice, inclusion, and radical love requires new spiritual vessels.
JD Vance’s speech in Munich about the supposed decline and misalignment in European values has been troubling me for a few weeks. I’m worried for the future of progressive US citizens.
I was reading the Bible yesterday evening, and as I sat with a parable, a thought came to mind. Somewhat absurd, but oddly fitting.
Trump? He’s just a sticking plaster on an old goat’s stomach.
It was an unpleasant vision, while reading about Jesus’ parable of the wineskins. It’s the one where new wine can’t be poured into old wineskins, or the skins will burst and everything, the wine, the container, will be lost forever. It’s a simple agrarian metaphor, but it’s also a stark warning about what happens when new life tries to expand within structures that can’t stretch to accommodate it.
Here in 2025, it’s hard to think of a more fitting parallel than the current state of the Evangelical Church, particularly in America, but not exclusively.
The parable appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus is being questioned about why his disciples don’t fast like others do. His response is unexpected and revolutionary. ‘No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. No, they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. (Matthew 9:17)
Placing the metaphor in context, Jesus is talking about the newness of his message, the disruptive, fermenting, world-changing nature of the kingdom of God. You can’t pour that kind of positive transformation into the rigid forms of legalism and expect it to hold.
But like all the parables, this wasn’t just a lesson for first-century Judaism; it’s timeless. It applies to any moment when tradition and transformation collide. And right now, in many Evangelical circles, we’re living out that parable in real-time.
In this modern retelling, the old wineskins are the traditional Christian institutions that hold tightly to patriarchy, heteronormativity, rigid authority structures, and a narrow reading of Scripture. These frameworks may have served a purpose in their time. But like old goatskins used for wine, they’ve become brittle.
Their ability to contain cultural ferment, LGBTQ+, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, feminist theology, racial reckoning, and pluralism, is wearing dangerously thin. The world has changed. You can’t put the wine back in the skin.
Some churches have tried to patch these wineskins up in electing Trump. He isn’t a reformer, and he’s not even a particularly religious man, but a symbolic bulwark for Evangelicals terrified of change.
A sticking plaster. A political pressure valve. But Jesus wasn’t talking about patchwork. He was talking about rupture, which is precisely what we’re seeing play out. The rise of the exvangelical movement has made visible the quiet exodus of people leaving the Church. Exvangelicals are not leaving because they’ve lost their faith. They are leaving because they’re trying to save it.
Alongside this is the deconstruction movement, in which believers critically examine and often dismantle the theological foundations they’ve been handed down.
They are not rejecting Christ, but the containers they’ve been handed no longer hold the weight of their spiritual or ethical convictions.
Meanwhile, white Christian nationalism has hardened into place, becoming the most brittle of all the old wineskins. It is a theological and political formation that combines faith with national identity, often associated with racial and cultural dominance.
It thrives on the belief that cultural change symbolises spiritual descent. Its power lies not its theological depth, but in fear, resentment, and the nostalgic longing for a past that never truly existed. For many, Trump became less a spiritual leader and more a symbol of cultural retrenchment. He is an authoritative figure of worldly vindication against perceived cultural enemies in a war rather than a call to repentance, humility, or transformation.
Can Trump contain the fermenting new wine in the old skins?
The problem is, the ‘new wine’, the fermenting, expanding, disruptive message of liberation and radical love, is increasingly being expressed outside traditional religious institutions, as well as within.
We see it in movements for racial justice that echo biblical calls for liberation. We see it in theologians reclaiming the dignity of LGBTQ+ believers, showing how Scripture’s call to love transcends traditional rigid categories. We see it in mutual aid networks and community initiatives that operate without formal church structures yet live out the early church’s ethos of sharing and caring for the vulnerable.
Even social media platforms like TikTok have become unexpected pulpits, where spiritual reflections, calls to justice, and stories of healing and inclusion reach audiences that the Church has often neglected, or even outright rejected.
These movements, while not always explicitly religious, often carry the spirit of the gospel in ways that institutional churches seem increasingly unwilling or unable to do. Luke’s version of the parable adds an extra line that heightens the metaphor: ‘And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, “The old is better”.’ This line captures the emotional tug of nostalgia and familiarity and reflects the very real resistance we’re seeing from parts of the Christian Right. For some, tradition isn’t just comforting, it’s synonymous with truth. The past feels safer, holier, and more certain.
But this reverence for the ‘old wine’ becomes dangerous when it prevents any openness to the new. Many traditions are wonderful and provide cultural bonding, but when justice, inclusion, and dignity are at stake, a refusal to evolve becomes more than stubbornness; it becomes a form of harm.
The parable doesn’t call for discarding the wine. It calls for new containers. A new structure. Jesus isn’t saying that the gospel must change to suit the culture, but that rigid, brittle systems cannot hold the Spirit’s movement when it begins to ferment and expand. The question isn’t whether the message is true, but whether the vessel can hold it.
Vatican II attempted this, adapting ancient traditions to a changing world. However imperfectly, it showed that institutions can change.
Today, some churches are having another go. They are experimenting with inclusive liturgies, rethinking theology through feminist and postcolonial lenses, and taking the time to genuinely listen to voices that were once ignored. Sadly, many others are not. They continue pouring new ferment into old forms and acting all astonished when it all bursts apart.
To be clear, this reading of the parable is not a call to abandon the gospel or rebrand Christianity in the image of the latest cultural trends. Evangelical critics might argue that the “new wine” represents the gospel itself, not social movements or shifting moral norms, and they’re right, in part. But the tension arises when institutions confuse the wineskin for the wine. The gospel is unchanging in essence. A message of radical love, grace, and liberation, but it has always demanded new containers as the Spirit moves in fresh ways across cultures and eras.
What many Evangelicals label as ‘cultural compromise’ may, in fact, be the very places where the gospel is fermenting most freely: in communities demanding dignity, inclusion, and justice. The question, then, is not whether the gospel should change, but whether our theological and institutional frameworks remain supple enough to hold its full ferment. If the wineskins crack at every sign of compassion, it may be the wineskins, not the wine, that need scrutiny.
This is about far more than church attendance or theological nuance. It’s about the future of the faith itself. Will Christianity in the West align itself with exclusion, nostalgia, and authoritarianism? Or will it find the courage to craft new, flexible, Spirit-filled structures capable of holding the transforming message of love and justice at the heart of the gospel? Like all parables, this one doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does offer a warning. When new wine comes, and we can rest assured that it always does, you need new wineskins.
Otherwise, the sticking plasters become more ubiquitous, and eventually everything breaks. And what is most precious might be lost.
So, let’s hope it doesn’t.