Jesus Christ uses the illustration of new wine and old wineskins to convey the importance of aligning beliefs and actions with God's way of life. In this parable, new wine represents the fresh, vibrant doctrines He brings, while old wineskins symbolize the brittle, outdated rites of the Pharisees. Just as new wine would ferment, expand, and burst an old skin, Christ's teachings cannot be contained within the corrupt, established traditions. New skins, strong and flexible, are needed to hold the new wine, indicating that God's truth must be embraced in its pure form without mixing it with old, incompatible beliefs. Attempting to force His doctrines into other forms would distort the truth, rendering it useless. This illustration emphasizes that the righteous system Christ establishes cannot be blended with the old ways, as they are fundamentally opposed. His new way must fully replace the old, allowing us to walk in newness of life.

The new wine, as depicted in the Parable of the Cloth and the Wineskins, carries profound significance. It is linked to Jesus being taken away, aligning with the Passover cup that represents Christ's blood and the New Covenant. Additionally, the new wine suggests God's Spirit—His love, power, and sound-mindedness—since the Holy Spirit could not be given until Jesus had gone away. This new wine is expansive, producing great pressure through fermentation, which an old, brittle wineskin cannot withstand, leading to a burst. The wineskin symbolizes a vessel, and vessels throughout Scripture represent people. The old man is the life before conversion, while the new man is the life that comes through conversion. Attempting to contain the dynamic new wine in the old life results in disaster, as the old ways are incompatible with the new wine's requirements for change, expansion, and steady improvement. The new wine is tied to the blood of Passover, the New Covenant, the receipt of God's Spirit, and the spiritual results produced by these powerful factors. Trying to force this into a person unwilling to change will cause them to come apart, wasting the precious new wine as it spills on the ground. Furthermore, no one having drunk old wine immediately desires the new, for they say the old is better. Physically, a finely aged wine may seem preferable, but spiritually, the new wine of Christ's sacrifice, the New Covenant, and God's Spirit poured out is infinitely more valuable than anything before conversion. Even after conversion, the old wine can seem more gratifying to the senses, as the old man still lingers, making the new wine less appealing when under the influence of fleshly desires. Only in abstaining from the old wine can the true blessing and superiority of the new be recognized. Jesus speaks of the new wine in the context of the New Covenant, stating that the cup is His blood, shed for many for the remission of sins. He declares He will not drink of this fruit of the vine until He drinks it new with His followers in His Father's kingdom. This points to a future anticipation of a specific fruit of the vine, a finely aged spiritual wine. He looks forward to a perfected vintage of His people, matured through the sanctification process akin to fermentation, as they grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. He anticipates savoring what He will have produced in their lives if they allow Him.

The concept of New Wine illustrates the superiority of the new over the old in God's creative work. In the miracle at Cana, Christ turned water into wine, and with mankind's participation in filling the waterpots, the new wine was deemed better than what man could produce alone, as the master of the feast noted, "You have kept the good wine until now." Christ also warns against the human tendency to reject the new in spiritual matters through the parable of new wine in old wineskins, lamenting that many, after tasting the old wine, say, "The old is better." This resistance to the new reflects a broader struggle to embrace the better covenant and promises that He mediates. As true followers, having tasted both the old and the new, the choice is made to prefer the new, recognizing it as better, different, and incompatible with the old ways. The tragedy would be to revert to believing, "The old is better," after experiencing the new wine of His transformative power.