The Reject

I sometimes have to smile when I think of a Reject Shop.  It’s not that I don’t occasionally purchase goods from the Reject Shop.  They have many good things and often at bargain basement prices.  It’s just a little ironic to go “shopping for rejects” because normally a reject is something that has been discarded or thrown out.  Our garbage bins and recycling bins are where rejects normally end up.

The Old Testament part of the Bible was familiar with rejects.  There is an expression of rejection that occurs 29 times in the Bible.  It’s the expression: “outside the camp”.  The skins and other offal from their sacrifices had to be taken “outside the camp”.  The ashes of their sacrifices were also taken “outside the camp”.  Their toilet facilities were “outside the camp”.







But it wasn’t only what we would regard as rubbish that was taken outside the camp.  Some people ended up there too.  When two sons of Aaron were punished by the Lord God for offering unauthorised fire on the altar, the Lord struck them down for their presumption and their cousins were told to carry their bodies “outside the camp”.  Capital punishment took place “outside the camp”.  Lepers, for the duration of their leprosy, were told to live outside the camp.  When Miriam rebelled against Moses (together with her brother Aaron) she was banished for seven days “outside the camp”.  Some bodily functions that made a person ritually unclean led to such people needing to spend a day (or more!) “outside the camp”.  Excommunication from the community meant being banished to live “outside the camp”.  Anything that was under God’s curse was a reject and belonged “outside the camp”.

The reason for all these exclusions from the camp of the Israelites, we are told, was because God lived among them and He is a holy God.  Anything unholy was rejected and taken “outside the camp”.  To put it crudely, rubbish and rejects – whatever was unholy – needed to be “outside the camp”.

The last time that phrase “outside the camp” is used in the Bible is in the 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews.  The writer is talking about the rituals associated with The Day of Atonement – the day that the Hebrews knew at “Yom Kippur”.  So we read that on that Day of Atonement… “The High Priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering but the bodies are burned “outside the camp”.  And then we get this amazing grand finale to this whole business of rejects being put “outside the camp” – and that grand finale is that this applies to Jesus, “…and so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy.”

Do you get the picture that the writer of Hebrews is painting for us?  Jesus Christ, on Good Friday (the Day of Atonement) became The Reject.  Jesus, the Reject…???  How could that be appropriate for the God-man whom no one could ever accuse of sin?  Well, it’s because Jesus died on the cross as our sin-bearing substitute.  He carried the rejection and banishment that we deserved.  He took our unholiness upon Himself.

But what a marvellous blessing that is for us.  As the writer says, “Jesus… suffered outside the city gates to make the people holy through His own blood.”  IOW His rejection resulted in our acceptance.  Through Jesus we now have access into the holy presence of God.

There’s just one other thing the writer to Hebrews is keen to get across to his readers.  Jesus deliberately became the reject to make us acceptable to a holy God… but that means that we have to go to Him to find that acceptance.  So for the author of the book of Hebrews that leads to an invitation to go to Jesus, "outside the camp".  However, the writer warns us that if we go to Him and identify with Him then we must also be prepared to bear the reproach that Jesus bore.  Because the reality is that we live in a world where Christians are rejected, just as Christ was rejected.

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 29/3/2026

Colin Buchanan has written lovely song on this theme: ‘outside the camp’….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2nSAr0JXt8 

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