2006 Reformation

THE FEAST OF THE NEW WINE
Matthew 9:17
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.
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In the above quoted Word our Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed the new beginning of the New Testament and the minimum
requirement of the new beginning: the rebirth by the Spirit in itself and with the meaning of regeneration and revival too.
You have to put the new wine into new bottles otherwise the method will lead to disaster for the bottle and even for the wine. We may think that even for the drinkers. If you have old bottles, it is not enough just to clean them or to
put a new name- tag on them, or if they are leaking then to gum them.
We need new bottles for the new wine which is the gospel. We are the bottles of God, and we have to be renewed by the Spirit. However our spiritual renewal may not be just a spiritual reform of our hearts, but we have to die for the sin by the power of Jesus’ cross, and we have to be spiritually reborn in the resurrected Christ as we were given the promise of God at our baptism, as it is written:
„Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ” Romans 6.4
It is really not easy, but that is the way it is. In our everyday reality we are not able to do it alone. The key word here: alone, because we are never alone, God is with us. We have a caring, loving, just and powerful Father, who holds us in
his providence on every days of our lives here and after. The New Wine is the symbol of the self-sacrificing Holy Spirit
which is given to us by the faith in the crucified and risen Lord, to whom may be praise and glory now and always.
Amen
Rev. Attila L. Gyorgy
Montreal, 2006 September 20.