Summary
A New Way
In Mark 2, Jesus stirs up controversy by eating with sinners and tax collectors, and by allowing his disciples to forgo the customary fasts. The Pharisees press him on it, and his answer announces something striking: a new way has arrived. Mark arranges this section in a chiastic pattern, with healings on either end and disputes over food and Sabbath flanking a central claim—Jesus himself is the new way breaking into the world “A New Way” 1-16-22.
But is this newness a clean break with the old? The Law given to Israel was never arbitrary. It carved out a holy people, distinguishing clean from unclean, sin from righteousness, so that Israel would belong to the Lord. The trouble was not the Law but what the Pharisees had made of it. In their zeal for obedience, they turned the Law into a mechanical instrument for measuring others and emboldening themselves. The prophet Amos had already warned against this kind of religion: assemblies and offerings without justice and mercy are noise the Lord refuses to hear Amos 5:21-24.
Jesus answers their challenge with a wedding image. The disciples cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them Mark 2:19. His presence is the celebration; fasting will come when he is taken away at the cross. The new way is not a new technique or a new code—it is a Person. Righteousness is found where Jesus is, because Jesus himself is the way John 14:6.
This does not abolish the old covenant; it fulfills it. Jesus said plainly that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it Matthew 5:17. The Law still does its proper work of exposing sin—"through the law comes knowledge of sin" Romans 3:20—driving us to repent and turn to the only One who saves. To rely on works of the Law for righteousness is to live under its curse, but Christ became a curse for us to redeem us Galatians 3:10-13. The old garment and old wineskins are images of trying to live under that old arrangement after the Bridegroom has come.
The new covenant is sealed in his blood, "shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins" Matthew 26:28. He kept every point of the Law perfectly, then carried our sins—thoughts, words, and deeds—into death on the tree. In Baptism we are washed into his perfection and brought into this new way of righteousness, given freely by grace. Every attempt to climb back into the old covenant to earn what Christ has given is met by the new way bursting through: righteousness is a gift, not a wage.
Living in this new covenant, the moral law—love God and love your neighbor—is no longer a ladder to climb but the shape of life the Holy Spirit works in us. We do not need to anxiously measure ourselves or scrutinize our brothers and sisters. We have been invited to the wedding feast through Christ alone. So it is not quite "out with the old, in with the new." It is always with the new—and in Christ the old itself is made new, because we are new in him.
Video citations
- “A New Way” 1-16-22 — If you would please open your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark the 2nd chapter, we will be in the Gospel of Mark the 2nd chapter. Have any of you ever tried to learn a new language or a 2nd language or…