Leviticus 13:45-46, “The leprous person who haas the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose…His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Hebrews 13:12, “Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through His own blood.”
Short Thoughts:
In Christ, YHWH Himself becomes the accursed one outside the camp so that accursed ones might be sanctified and drawn into the heart of holiness.
Long Thoughts:
verses 45-46 which explain that one who is found to be unclean with a leprous disease must let their hair hang loose and wear torn clothes and be separated outside the camp from the rest of God’s people and—most tragically—from the Lord Himself (represented in the tabernacle and especially the Holy of Holies). So we see that the point here is to be unclean cuts us off from nearness to the Holy One.
This seems like—and no doubt was—a heavy sorrow for those afflicted with leprosy (and many other ailments and deformities that would cut people of the Old Covenant off from full participation in the religious system). They were outcasts, so it seemed, from even God Himself. And yet YHWH never ordains for His creatures what He will not bear in Himself.
Though the lepers of Moses’ day likely could not anticipate what was to come….the very God from whom they thought themselves severed would one day dwell physically in the midst of His people, and when He did—He would become like the lepers. The Beloved and Eternal Son, the Creative Word, the Covenant Lord of Israel would leave the Holy of Holies and—on the cross—dwell as an accursed one outside the camp (Heb.13:12)….
And if the Holy One who makes the Holy of Holies holy, if HE chooses to dwell in the ash heaps outside the gate, if He chooses to take shame and exile and abandonment onto and into Himself, does He not bring the Holy Place *into* the accursed place? (Indeed, might we not say that the veil of the temple was torn in two because—in that moment—the Holy of Holies was no longer in the temple, it was on the cross….?) And if this has happened, if the Holy One has torn the veil and borne our curse and so invaded even “outside the camp” with His presence, does He not sanctify the accursed ones? Hebrews says that He does (again, Heb.13:12).
Yes, in Christ, the entire congregation of God’s people—bar none—have been made clean. Just as the flesh of the holy sacrifice makes holy those things that it touches (Lev.6:27), so too the flesh and blood of the slain and risen Christ makes holy the formerly accursed ones who receive Him by faith.
Because our Lord and our God became our uncleanness and our unholiness (2 Cor.5:21), because—in Christ—YHWH bore the True Leprosy of our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Pt. 2:24), because He Himself was stripped and shamed and “burned” outside the camp (Lev.4:12,13:46; Heb.13:12), and because He—by the blood of the eternal covenant—was raised from the dead in newness and purity and indestructibility of life, because of all this, we who receive Him, who trust in Him, who cling to and hide in Him, we are made clean, we are made holy, and we are brought near…..brought into the camp and—yes—even brought into the Holy of Holies itself.
