Hebrews 13:12 Commentary and Bible Study

For our sake Christ ‘became obedient unto death’ (Philippians 2:8) and God ‘made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). He took on himself the guilt of our sins and the shame associated with that sin. He said through the mouth of David, ‘But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn (Psalm 22:6-7). Isaiah describes the cross: ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not’ (Isaiah 53:3). How could it be otherwise? Part of the punishment that was due to us was the eternal shame of our sins as they are exposed in the light of God’s infinite holiness. Even that aspect of our punishment had to be transferred to Christ. He did all this to sanctify his people, to wash away the guilt of their sin and to impute his righteousness to them so that they are made to be a holy people even under the all-searching eye of God. He paid for our sins with his spotless life, and he shed his blood to show that he had given up his life. But the focus of the verse is on this truth: that he suffered without the gate. This was no incidental circumstance of the crucifixion. Following his trial they ‘led him away to crucify him’ (Matthew 27:31). Christ ‘bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha … The place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city’ (John 19:17, 20). It was outside the city proper, a place reserved for such shameful executions. Now at last the meaning of the ritual which the Jews had observed for so many centuries was made clear. To do justice to the fact that Christ was to be executed outside the city of Jerusalem, certain offerings were fully burned outside the camp. It was too shameful that such a death should take place in the living area of the city.