Hebrews 13:13

‘Let us therefore go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.’

Here then we are faced with the grand paradox. He was sent out of Jerusalem by the Jews as a reproach, just as the reproach of Israel was to fall on the great Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 53:0). He was sent out to be cursed for being a blasphemer and irreligious. And yet by being thus sent out He was revealed to all but the prejudiced as truly and exceptionally holy. In the same way those who would follow Him must be willing to bear the same reproach, that they too might partake in His holiness. They too must be willing to suffer at the hands of His rejecters. For that is what will demonstrate their holiness.

As with the Servant and as with Jesus they will then find the tables turned. The Servant’s reproach resulted in His triumph after dying for sin so that he could sprinkle many nations and make many to be accounted righteous (Isaiah 52:13-15; Isaiah 53:3-5; Isaiah 53:10-12). And in the same way the reproach on Jesus has revealed his exceptional holiness, has brought about His sacrifice for the sins of the whole world outside the camp, has raised Him in triumph, and has made possible man’s acceptability to God on that basis, if they will but trust in Him. He will thus ‘make many to be accounted righteous’ having borne their transgressions (Isaiah 53:11). He will make them exceptionally holy in God’s eyes.

This being so, if we would be holy as He is holy, we too must go outside the camp, we must go forth boldly to Him, sharing the reproach that He suffered. We must turn our backs on the camp. We must willingly turn our back to the smiters and hide not our face from shame and spitting (Isaiah 50:6). And this will be a divine necessity, for the truth is that if we are made holy by Him we will be too holy for ‘the camp’, and those in the camp, and they will not be able to bear such a thought and will persecute us.

So while those of Jerusalem sent Him outside the camp because they thought that He was unfit, yes, even accursed, and continued to pour reproach and even persecution on His followers, they did so because they had failed to recognise Him as the sacrifice and sin offering which was for the sins of the world (in spite of Isaiah 53:10 and John 1:29). But God sent Him outside the camp so that His perfect holiness and adequacy as a perfect sin offering might be revealed, and that He was so holy that the camp could not contain Him, and to demonstrate the unworthiness of Jerusalem.

What is more in their hearts, had they been willing to admit it, even the Judaisers knew that that was the real reason that they had turned Him out, for, as the tradition (the Gospels) reveals, they had hated Him for being too good. It was precisely because they could not bear His purity and His closeness to God that they had done it. In the same way as they had, long before, remained in the camp of Israel and had let Moses deal with God outside the camp on the Mount, because God was too holy and they could not bear it, so now they had remained in the camp of Israel, in Jerusalem, and had left Jesus to deal with God ‘outside the camp’, because they could not bear His holiness. This time they had not outwardly fully known what they were doing, but God knew, and they knew underneath as the very ferocity of their persecution revealed. The truth is that His rejection was because He was too holy and they were not holy enough. Yet had they only but been willing to see it, they would have recognised that everything of ultimate value had to happen ‘outside the camp’, as it always had, because they and the camp were unfit.

And the final lesson that sprang from this was that if his readers wanted to enjoy true holiness it would not be by returning to Jerusalem as a religious centre, (let Jerusalem lovers take note), but by turning their backs finally on Jerusalem as a religious centre and coming to Him, outside the camp, sharing His glorious reproach (compare Hebrews 11:26).

And paradoxically the very cause that turned the Judaisers against Him is the very reason that we can be redeemed through Him. It is because He was made a curse for us that He can save us. And by our becoming one with Him our curse is taken by Him, and we participate in His awful holiness. That is why Jerusalem as a religious centre now holds nothing for those who participate in Jesus Christ, and never can do so again. Eternal redemption has been accomplished outside the camp, and there alone.