Our Standard of Measurement

On Sunday we studied Mark 2:18–22. It is easy to flatten it into a simple contrast between “dead religion” and “fresh faith.” But the passage is more precise than that. Jesus is not criticizing fasting as such. He is not teaching that old things are automatically bad or new things are automatically good. He is revealing that His arrival changes the frame of reference for devotion itself. The question beneath the question is not merely, “Should disciples fast?” The deeper question is, “Who gets to define faithfulness now that the Bridegroom has come?”

That is why the burden of the sermon was: Let Christ, not comparison, shape your devotion to fit His new reality. The sermon had to press that truth directly. Mark gives us a small scene, but it opens a large biblical-theological window into fasting, covenant joy, messianic identity, and the danger of trying to force Christ into containers He came to fulfill and replace.

The question in Mark 2:18 begins with a real and respected spiritual practice. Fasting in Scripture is tied to grief, repentance, dependence, mourning, urgency, and seeking the Lord. The Old Testament required self-denial on the Day of Atonement, and later Jewish practice included additional fasts connected to national sorrow and repentance. The Day of Atonement was the only required fast in the Mosaic Law, while Zechariah 8:19 and Esther 9:31 reflect additional fasts that developed in Israel’s life. 

By the first century, voluntary fasting had become a visible marker of seriousness. Luke 18:12 shows the Pharisee boasting that he fasted twice a week, and early Christian sources such as the Didache (8.1) later distinguish Christian fasting days from the fasting patterns associated with hypocritical display. The issue in Mark 2, then, is not whether fasting can be faithful. Jesus Himself fasted in the wilderness. The issue is what happens when a good practice becomes a public measuring device.
 

That distinction is still needed. Pew Research Center reported in 2024 that 21% of U.S. adults say they fast for certain periods during holy times, with Muslim Americans most likely to report fasting, followed by Jewish Americans, Catholics, and Black Protestants. Lifeway-related discipleship research found that among surveyed Protestant churchgoers, 15% had fasted in the previous six months when fasting was defined as going without food for a period of time to concentrate on prayer or meditation. The modern church is not living in a fasting-saturated culture, especially among many Baptists and evangelicals, but the danger remains the same. We can either neglect fasting as unnecessary or practice it as self-advertisement. 

Jesus gives us a better category. Fasting is not abolished, but it is reoriented. It must be governed by His presence, His absence, His cross, His resurrection, and His return. A discipline detached from Christ becomes spiritual theater. A discipline submitted to Christ becomes embodied longing.

When Jesus answers, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?” He is doing more than making a clever point about timing. He is stepping into a deep Old Testament image. Israel’s Scriptures often describe the Lord’s covenant relationship with His people in marriage language. Hosea portrays Israel’s unfaithfulness as marital betrayal and promises future restoration. Isaiah 54:5 says, “For your Maker is your husband.” Jeremiah 31:32 describes the Lord as a husband to Israel even when they broke His covenant.

That background gives Mark 2 tremendous weight. Jesus does not simply say, “My ministry is a happy occasion.” He identifies Himself with the role of the bridegroom. Jesus’ bridegroom saying likely resonates with older Jewish tradition in which God’s renewed covenant with His people is pictured as restored marriage joy. Jesus’ use of the bridegroom image connects His presence to the inbreaking joy of the kingdom and the covenant imagery of God as husband to His people. 

That means the questioners are not simply misjudging the disciples. They are failing to perceive the identity of Jesus. They are reading the room by the wrong event. They think they are standing in an ordinary religious setting where inherited fasting patterns should govern the moment. Jesus says they are standing at a wedding.

This also explains why joy is not a mood in this text. Joy is a theological response to the presence of Christ. The disciples are not careless because they are eating. They are appropriate because the Bridegroom is present. Devotion is not measured first by severity. It is measured by fit. Does the practice fit the person and work of Christ?

That is a needed correction in a day when many believers feel pressure to prove seriousness by visible intensity. But Jesus does not confuse intensity with fidelity. The wedding guests are faithful precisely because they rejoice while the Bridegroom is with them.

Verse 20 shifts the tone: “The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.” The phrase “taken away” is not casual. It casts a shadow across the wedding room. Mark’s Gospel is already moving toward the cross, and Jesus’ language anticipates the violent removal He will endure.

Theologically, this is beautiful. Jesus does not say His disciples will never fast. He says they will fast when fasting fits. The Bridegroom’s presence calls for feasting. The Bridegroom’s removal calls for fasting. The resurrection and ascension place believers in a tension between joy and longing. Christ has come. Christ was taken away. Christ is risen. Christ will return.

That tension explains Christian devotion. We do not fast as though Christ has not come. We do not feast as though the world is already healed. We live between accomplished redemption and awaited restoration. This is why Christian fasting should never be a gloomy attempt to earn favor. It is hunger shaped by hope. It says, “Lord, You have come, and still we long for the day when faith becomes sight.”

Recent religious data gives this point a sharp edge. Pew’s 2025 Religious Landscape Study reported that 44% of U.S. adults say they pray daily, down from 58% in 2007, though relatively stable since 2021. The same study reported that 29% of adults read Scripture at least monthly and 19% participate in prayer groups, Scripture-study groups, or religious educational programs at least monthly. If those numbers tell us anything, they suggest that American spirituality often remains interested in religious language while losing durable devotional habits. Mark 2 does not solve that by shaming people into performance. It calls us back to Christ-centered practice. 

The wineskins image is often misused as a slogan for whatever new idea someone wants to promote. But Jesus is not saying, “New is always better.” He is saying that His kingdom reality cannot be contained in forms that resist Him.

In the ancient world, wineskins were commonly made from animal hides. Fresh skins had elasticity and could stretch as new wine fermented and released gases; old skins became brittle and could burst under pressure. Ancient wineskins were leather vessels used for storage and travel, and that new wine required elastic skins because fermentation exerted pressure. Fermenting wine stretched fresh skins, while old skins, that had lost elasticity, could split more easily under the pressure formed from the fermentation process. 

That historical background keeps us from sentimentalizing the image. New wine does not politely sit still. It works. It expands. It presses outward. If the container cannot yield, rupture follows.

So what are the old skins in Mark 2? At the immediate level, they are the assumptions that place Jesus under existing religious comparison systems. More broadly, they include any structure of self-rule, self-salvation, or inherited religious control that refuses to be reshaped by Christ. The image does not condemn the Old Testament. Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets. The problem is not old revelation. The problem is an old container that refuses fulfillment.

This is where seasoned believers need to be careful. We can defend tradition in a way that honors Scripture, or we can defend tradition because it protects our control. We can welcome discipline because it forms us under Christ, or we can use discipline to preserve a reputation. We can love historic faithfulness, or we can baptize personal preference and call it orthodoxy.

The wineskin question is not, “Are you old-fashioned or modern?” The question is, “Can your life stretch under the lordship of Christ?” If the gospel presses into your bitterness, your money, your schedule, your secret habits, your family patterns, your ministry assumptions, or your cherished measurements of success, will you yield? New wine is not destructive because it is wrong. It becomes destructive when the container refuses to change.

The mature Christian does not ask first, “What will make me look serious?” or “How do I compare to them?” The better question is, “What fits the presence, cross, resurrection, reign, and return of Christ?” That question will keep us from both legalism and laziness. It will keep joy from becoming shallow and discipline from becoming proud.

The Bridegroom has come. The Bridegroom was taken away. The Bridegroom has risen. The Bridegroom will return. Until then, let every practice bend toward Him.