# 275 Today’s Living Word comes from Mark 2:21 "No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse.
From the matter of fasting Jesus gently reminds His audience that things are going to have to be different now that He has arrived with the Gospel. The old garment that He speaks of is the religious practices of the day. The formalism and outward observances that had become a substitute for a personal relationship with God and thus had to be discarded completely.
Adherence to religious duties had created a system of self-righteousness that had to be replaced by a brand new garment. It won’t do to take a little part of Jesus’ teachings and try to patch the old system. You cannot co-mingle Law and Gospel! Since we are saved by grace through faith, we must continue to live by grace and faith.
Jesus has fulfilled the ceremonial Law perfectly, and so when we don Him in baptism, ( Ga 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.) we are clothed in His seamless garment of righteousness. Nothing of the old is lost, it is just swallowed up in the new. The new that no longer looks to superficial ceremonies and duties for it’s righteousness, but to Him alone.
I'm Duane Matz and that’s today’s Living Word.
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