A Few Thoughts on Hebrews 13:12-14

So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

 

The book of Hebrews is a book that covers a lot of doctrinal subjects and which gives an exposition of the New Covenant and how it is superior to the Old Covenant. That is however not the purpose of the book. Too often as Christians we view Christianity as a series of doctrines to be learned, but in the early church doctrine was taught to promote godly living. The whole purpose of showing the superiority of the New Covenant is to bring the recalcitrant Jewish believers to this conclusion – go outside the camp. What did this mean to them and how does it apply to us?

The Jews could boast in many ways of their society and culture. They were the only nation in antiquity that did not abandon unwanted children or practice abortion. They had a high literacy rate especially among their male population, because of their synagogue schools. They could even boast as no other culture could that much of their cultural framework was from God, because it was based on the law. The superiority, on the whole, of Jewish morality and their just claim to having received their cultural framework from God made it very hard for them to break with their traditions.

Peter told God, "No" three times when he saw the vision of the sheet with unclean animals come down and was commanded to kill and eat one (Acts 10:9-16). Even after that when he preached to Cornelius and the Holy Spirit fell on him and those with him, Peter and the Jews still had reservations, but they knew it was of God. Peter then had to make a defense of his conduct in Acts 11. All of this shows just how difficult it was to break with the Jewish culture and traditions for even the most godly of men, who had already given up so much for Jesus.

Yet in spite of all the good things that could have been truthfully said of the Jewish culture at the time there were serious problems with it. It majored on minor details and neglected what God considered very important. While it forbade polygamy and other flagrant forms of immorality, it was very lax concerning divorce and remarriage. It also tended to place the welfare of the Jewish nation above its proper place and above the glory of God. As can be seen in the prophets, especially Jeremiah, this was something that the Jews had repeatedly done (Jer. 7:4).

For Jewish Christians the danger was that they could avoid much persecution if they outwardly conformed to Jewish tradition while at the same time they remained Christians. They had endured persecution before (Heb. 10:34) and it was understandable that they would want to avoid further persecution. Yet this attitude of desiring to fit in with Jewish culture placed them in danger of backsliding as they were continually warned in Hebrews.

Here is where this message becomes applicable for us. No matter where we are or what culture we are in Christianity will run counter to it in some way. In rural places in Malawi there is great pressure put on mothers to have their children where charms from witchdoctors to prevent disease. Even many Christians do this because if they don't and the child becomes sick the family all converges on the parents and applies pressure on them. In the 1850's and 1860's in America, while there was what could be called a godly culture in some ways, yet it tolerated slavery in the South and sweatshops in the North, and little was said about it in the churches. Victorian England for all its supposed piety fought a war so that they could continue to sell opium in China. The mixture of Christianity with culture and national pride has seriously disrupted the testimony of the Church many times in history. Nietzsche wrote that one could only be a German or a Christian not both, and the rise of Nazism was only possible because many Christians decided that being German came first.

As an American who has spent his life from the age of nine outside of America with the exception of two years I have a different perspective on culture than most people. As I see it now in the American churches there are two main groups, the one group goes along with the current American culture fads and desires to fit in as much as possible, the second group wants to return America to the way it was in the fifties. It is my belief that neither of these groups truly please God in these endeavors. The one group ends up watering down the Gospel in the name of tolerance, the other group though more conservative often also substitutes American culture for the Gospel - it's just the American culture of yesteryear. The problem with that is that if the Church in America in the fifties was doing so well, we wouldn't have gotten into the mess we are in now anyway. True Christians will follow Christ in their generation. There are different battles in each national culture and each generation, but a true Christian will never really be at home in any culture or generation of the world. The Booths were outcasts in the work they began, Spurgeon died outside of the denomination he had been with for years, Wesley was an Anglican that most Anglicans didn't want. Hudson Taylor was considered very odd in his day too.

These people all saw that Christ was outside the camp, and they were willing to forsake all for the Gospel. It is in forgetting our father's house that we win the heart of our heavenly Bridegroom (Psa. 45:10-11). We will only have a shallow and superficial Christianity unless we take this lesson deeply to heart. Let us go outside the camp. We do not go because we are mavericks, but we go because the One we love is already out there, and He is being mocked in this world and we want to be with Him even in His shame and sufferings. To Him be glory forever!