Lord’s Supper Meditation: Outside the Camp with Jesus (Heb. 13:11-15)
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A Twilight Musing
The contrast of covenants in this passage highlights the fact that the sacrifices of atonement in the Old Covenant were only of intermediary value (“It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins,” Heb. 10:4). However, the Perfect Atoning Sacrifice of Jesus is a unifying completion of the sacrifices on the annual Day of Atonement under the Old Law. Lev. 16 describes that whole ceremony, which required three unblemished animals, a bull and two male goats. The bull and one of the goats were to be slaughtered as sin offerings, and their blood sprinkled on the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies and on the altar in the tabernacle courtyard. After all of this purification of the people and the tabernacle, the high priest was to put his hands on the head of the remaining goat and symbolically transfer the sins of the people to it, and it was to be released in the wilderness as a “scapegoat.” Rounding off these sacrifices, the remains of the slain bull and goat were to be taken into the wilderness “outside the camp” and burned completely.
It is this latter element of the ceremony of atonement that is referred to in regard to Jesus’ sacrifice: "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood” (v. 12). In the Old Testament, there was a separation between the atoning blood of the sacrificial animal and its body, with only the blood being used within the tabernacle and the body being taken outside the camp to be burned. In the Perfect Atonement by Jesus, He was both the high priest and the sacrificial lamb being offered, and there was no need of a multiplicity of beasts, nor a split between the sacramental blood in the Holy Place and the burning of the carcass outside the camp. It is significant that the Perfect Atonement was not carried out in the Holy of Holies in the temple, but outside Jerusalem altogether, in a place meant for shame, but transformed by the death of Jesus into a symbol of glorious redemptive suffering.
If we are to share and participate in this Perfect Redemptive Suffering, the Hebrews writer goes on, “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore." Although we may be reminded of the shame Jesus bore, how often are we moved to think of our obligation to share in his disgrace? If we remember His sacrifice truly, we go beyond a neat ceremony worked into the context of a respectable worship service. We express a willingness to step over the line of mere convention and expose ourselves to the contempt of the world, as Jesus did, and we reaffirm that this world is not our home. Moreover, if we truly identify with Jesus as we partake, we determine to be so dedicated to doing God's will that we are willing go against the grain of the everyday world that we live in. As we now partake, let us commit ourselves to sharing His shame, if necessary, so that we may also share His glory.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.
