330. What Is to Be Understood by Putting "New Cloth on Old Garment"?

The new is really the unshrunken cloth which, when it became wet and dried, would draw and strain the old garment, making a greater rent. The meaning was that at that time the most intelligent Jews, such as Nicodemus, were hailing Christ as a reformer. They were mistaken. His religion was not a new patch on the old. The old could not be mended, but must give place to his new religion. A specimen of this futile attempt was seen in the struggle to force the old Jewish laws on the Gentiles, which was repudiated (see Acts 15:1-21).