Verse 10 says, “We have an altar, from which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle.” This altar must be the cross on which the Lord Jesus offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sins (10:12). According to the regulations regarding the offerings in the Old Testament, the sacrifice for sin, or sin offering, whose blood was brought into the Holy of Holies or Holy Place for atonement, afforded nothing for the offering priest or the offerer to eat. The entire offering was burnt (Lev. 4:2-12; 16:27; 6:30). Hence, from the altar of the sin offering (which in the fulfillment of the New Testament is the Lord’s cross) those who served the tabernacle have no right to eat. Verse 10 is a strong argument against the food used by the Judaizers in their strange teaching, attempting to carry away the new covenant believers from the enjoyment of Christ. As we have seen, their emphasis was on the food which they enjoyed in their religious services. But the writer of this book argues that in the sin offering, the basic offering for their yearly atonement (Lev. 16), there was nothing for anyone to eat. With the sin offering it is not a matter of eating, but of receiving its efficacy. Now the real sin offering is Christ, who has offered Himself to God for our sins and accomplished full redemption for us that we might be brought into the enjoyment of God’s grace in Him under the new covenant. What we need today is not to eat the foods of the old covenant services, but to receive the efficacy of Christ’s offering and follow Him in the new covenant grace outside the camp, outside the Jewish religion.
In this book Christ is presented only as the sin offering, not as any other offering. Since our problem with God is basically a problem of sin, the sin offering is the basic and most crucial of all the offerings. If our problem of sin had not been solved, our problem with God would still remain. Several times in this book we are told that Christ offered Himself (7:27; 9:14), but each time we see that Christ offered Himself as the sin offering. Thus, the argument in chapter thirteen is this: however much the Hebrew Christians went to the festivals to eat the ceremonial meals, they could not eat of the sin offering. But now they enjoy Christ as the sin offering. Of this offering there was nothing for those in Judaism to eat. Furthermore, verse 11 says, “The bodies of those animals, whose blood is brought into the Holy of Holies by the high priest concerning sin, are burned outside the camp.” Christ’s body was carried outside the gate. There He suffered death and, in a sense, was burned. As the sin offering, Christ is not for food but for sacrifice outside the gate.
Verse 12 says, “Wherefore also Jesus, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.” The blood of the sin offering being brought into the Holy of Holies on the day of atonement to make atonement for the people and its body being burnt outside the camp (Lev. 16:14-16, 27) typify the blood of Christ, the real sin offering, being brought into the true Holy of Holies to accomplish redemption for us and His body being sacrificed for us outside the gate of the city of Jerusalem.
Christ’s body suffered the death of the cross outside the gate, and His blood was brought into the Holy of Holies for our sanctification (vv. 11-12). This book unveils that God’s heavenly calling is to make us a heavenly people (3:1), a people who are sanctified unto God. Christ is the Sanctifier (2:11). He suffered the death of the cross, shed His blood on it, and entered the Holy of Holies with His blood (9:12) that He might be able to do the sanctifying work by the heavenly ministry (8:2, 6) of His heavenly priesthood (7:26), and that we might enter “within the veil” by His blood to participate in Him as the heavenly Sanctifier. By participating in Him in this way, we shall be enabled to follow Him outside the camp by the sanctifying pathway of the cross.