Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Luke 5:37

"And no man putteth new wine into old wine-skins; else the new wine will burst the skins, and itself will be spilled, and the skins will perish." — Luke 5:37 (ASV)

The second illustration suggests that Jesus’ teaching is like fermenting wine, wine that seems to have almost inherent vigor and cannot be contained within an old rigid system, just as such wine cannot be contained in old wineskins that have lost elasticity. Jesus concludes by emphasizing that people tend to want the old and to reject the new, assuming (wrongly in this case) that the old is better.