“Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17). When you put new wine into a wineskin, that wine is going to bubble and ferment and expand. If the wineskin is new and soft and flexible, this isn't really a problem. It can stretch and grow with the expanding volume of the fermenting wine. But if you pour that new wine into an old wineskin, with leather that is hard and tough and inflexible, then that old wineskin is going to break and burst and spill all of that wine. Some of us may feel that our hearts are like old wineskins - hard, tough, inflexible, brittle. It may be a hard heart, but it's the only one we have and we definitely don't want it to break. We don't want to put any new wine into our hearts that might break them. We may even convince ourselves that we care more about ruining the wine than ruining our hearts. We may recognize, or think we do, the infinite worth of our Savior's atoning sacrifice, and with a sincere desire to not waste a single drop of His precious blood, we close ourselves off from the enabling power of Christ's Atonement. After all, the Savior said that we shouldn't put new wine into old bottles, or both the wine and the bottles will be ruined. But too often we try to do things out of order. The Savior says He will cleanse us, but we are ashamed to approach Him in a filthy state, so we tell ourselves that we will clean ourselves up and then come to Him and He can brush off the last few specks of dirt in a pro forma sort of way. The Savior says He will heal us, but we tell ourselves that we will try to involve the Savior once we don't feel so broken. We tell ourselves our bottles are too old and used up to be worthy of our Savior’s new wine. We don't have to wait for shiny new bottles before we can let the New Wine of our Savior's Atoning Grace into our hearts. Yes, the new wine will break the old bottles. Let it! That's sort of the point. We're not supposed to break our hearts first and let our Savior's love in after. We're supposed to fill our hearts with the pure love of Christ, until our cracked and shriveled old wineskins burst from the joy and peace and redeeming love swelling inside them. Some of the New Wine will spill out, but it will not be wasted. It is admirable that we wish to be so miserly with our Savior's precious blood. It is of infinite worth! But it is not up to us to decide how it gets used. And if the Savior wishes to pour it into old bottles, knowing that the old bottles will break and spill some of that blood, that is His choice. He did not hold back when He sacrificed Himself. “he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:12). If it takes using up some of His blood to break down our old hearts so that we will accept new hearts, soft and humble and contrite and willing to submit our will to His, then that is a sacrifice that our Savior is willing to make. I hope we can all have the courage to let the love of Christ break our hearts, “until [our] hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflow, and [our] joy is like swords, and [we] pass in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.” (JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King).
