NOTES for Luk 5:17-39

One of the Gospel's unchanging qualities is its newness. In every age, regardless of how “Christianized” it was, the Gospel has always proved to be “new wine in old wineskins,” bursting people's established ideas about the world and about God. People always have their notions of justice, the rules of religious life, and what is permissible or forbidden. Therefore, when Christ comes to them, for whom God's love is the only rule, He inevitably comes into conflict with those whose religious ideas have obscured God, who do not want to believe in the forgiveness of sinners and cannot understand that the sick are closer to the physician than the healthy—or those who consider themselves healthy. It is important to remember that this newness of the Gospel must be revealed and recognized by us as well, not only by Jesus' contemporaries, so that the paradox of His Message can also break open our little world and open it toward God.