No Patchwork

UV 2214/10000 No Patchwork Clothing
No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

Mark 2 v 21

Without the values of eternal life, the values of salvation, our lives are naked, wretched, exposed, robbed of peace, security and dignity. We cannot wear clothes that are partially old and partially new. We cannot wear old clothes with new patches to cover the areas that are damaged or worn out. We cannot mix our old and new natures, our old life and our new life in Christ. The prodigal son’ s father welcomed him back into his house, giving him a set of brand new clothes. The old clothes were consigned to the fire so that there was no reminder to him of the wretchedness, misery and vice of his past life. The metaphor of new clothes is to indicate that we need to discard our old clothes, the dirty rags of negative thinking, negative speaking, negative actions and reactions and wear the new clothes of salvation. We should not attempt to put new patches on our old set of clothes by tweaking a thing here and there. If we do so, we will end up worse than we were before. We need to get rid of old and dead habits as well as the underlying old attitudes. We need to wear the new clothes provided for us that moth or age cannot destroy. It is not the imaginary clothes of the Emperor but the clothes befitting a priest and a king. We need to be both humble as a priest and regal as a king, compassionate as a priest and strong and authoritative as a king, righteous as a priest and joyous as a king.

The Father had given us new clothing to cover us from head to foot in Jesus: the headdress or hat of absolute confidence in the promise of eternal life by faith and grace. We need not worry that our past misdeeds will catch up with us. We can throw away our guilt rag, our fear rag, our worry rag, our rag of pride, our rag of confidence in our own righteousness. We need to cast these into the fire to prevent these from re-appearing in our lives as patches on our new clothes. We need to clothe ourselves with the protective covering of faith, the adherence to the revealed truths, obedience to the Word, joy and delight in doing the will of God, peace with God, self and others and the willingness to be communicators of the grace of the Lord. When we discard any element of our clothing, we would look bare or naked in that area. We need to develop a new way of thinking, listening, speaking. Our goals and priorities are completely changed not partially. Hereon, whatever we think, speak or do, we should ask ourselves whether we are representing, manifesting, reflecting the riches of the Father’s love or are we manifesting the dirty rags or patches of our past lives.

Our clothes of the new life should not have any vestige of the past, no remnant or souvenir of greed, lust, bitterness, envy, arrogance, selfishness and so on. It should not be a patchwork of white symbolising the pure, the righteous, the good and black, symbolising our old nature. The new set of robes given to the prodigal son is a symbol of his new creation or redeemed status. He believed his father enough to return to his house. The father loved him enough to forget the past and receive him as if he is a long lost beloved son. The signet ring the father gave him is a symbol of the authority he would wield once again in the father’s house. The new shoes he gave his son were to go to places to represent the father or where the father sent him. It is a symbol of a change in direction of our lives.

Prateep V Philip