No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. New wine must be put into fresh wineskins. (Luke 5:37-38)
The shortcoming of the Reformation is that it was a reformation, not a revolution. It pulled away from Rome just far enough to breathe, then stopped to build a smaller Rome. It reclaimed fragments of the truth, then enshrined them in rigid systems that could not hold the fullness of Christ. The new wine came, but it was poured into skins already cracked with compromise, and so much of it leaked away. Men called it progress, but it was only a delay in the inevitable confrontation between God and man. When you reform a corpse, you do not make it live. You just rearrange its limbs before it rots again.
If faithless ministers, if the anti-faith, anti-miracle leaders and their institutions, were ever useful to God, it was only as temporary tools for a specific moment. God can use even a Pharisee’s voice to read his word, but when that moment passes, the tool is discarded. He has exploited them for his own purposes, and now their usefulness has ended. The salt has lost its flavor. It is ready to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. They are not helping the church advance; they are holding it back. And the faithful must let them go. No ceremony, no nostalgia, just let them fall into the irrelevance they have earned.
The church has recovered enough truth to leave them behind. It has reformed, then reformed again. Yet some refuse to continue past the first step, as if taking that step has earned them the right to dictate the path for everyone else. They once rejected Satan, but then refused to continue with Christ, especially when he came with all his fullness, his power, and his promises intact. But there is only one Christ. He cannot be divided into parts you like and parts you discard. To reject his fullness is to reject him entirely.
If the church is to move forward, it must treat such people as Christ treated the Pharisees, cutting them off without hesitation. They are not wounded heroes. They are rotting impediments. Their teachings are as repugnant as wet dog excrement, and that is the kindest way to put it. Leave them in their filth and keep walking. The kingdom advances not by dragging along the dead weight of old wineskins, but by carrying forward the new wine in vessels prepared to hold it.
If reformation after reformation still leaves us surrounded by so much garbage, then it is time for a revolution. We do not need another partial correction. We need a wholesale overthrow. Don’t reform, revolt! This is no time for polite patience with theological criminals. If God is moving, we move with him. If men try to block the way, we shove them aside and leave them in the dust. We follow God, not men.
There will be no respectful bow to the worthless scum who teach others to doubt the word of God. We will not pretend that their faithless poison is seasoning worth preserving. They stand with their heads inflated by degrees and titles, believing this gives them the authority to dictate which commands of God must be obeyed and which promises of God may be believed. They imagine they can police the faith of the saints. They imagine themselves gatekeepers to the kingdom. In truth, they are condemned squatters blocking the road.
To such men, the only fitting response is contempt. Take your credentials, your honorary doctorates, your theological society memberships, take the entire stack of papers that your equally stupid friends signed, and put them in a suitcase. Tie it securely around your neck, and throw yourself into the sea. That would be the greatest contribution to the church and to humanity that a faithless person could ever make. As Jesus said, some deserve a millstone and the depths.
The Lord spoke of wineskins because he knew what the new covenant would bring. It would be the pouring out of the Spirit, the explosion of life, the eruption of power that could not be contained in the dead forms of the old system. Yet men keep trying to force it back into brittle containers. They fear the chaos of life more than they hate the sterility of death. They cling to the wineskins they have patched and repatched, as if their handiwork could be improved by a few more stitches. But the new wine keeps breaking free, and they keep hating it for that very reason.
When Christ brings new wine, he demands new vessels. He does not negotiate with the old ones. He does not soften the ferment, slow the expansion, or dilute the strength so that the old forms can hold it. He lets the wine break them apart. And if you are wise, you will be found among the new vessels, not among the shattered skins littering the floor.
We are no longer in the age of cautious reform. We are in the age of decisive separation. The old wineskins have done all the damage they can do. Now the issue is whether we will remain tethered to them out of misplaced sentiment, or whether we will cut the cord and walk with God. The answer should be obvious. New wine must be poured into fresh wineskins. And it will be, whether the old guard approves or not.