For as long as I can remember, I have stood outside the fence.
I wrote a song about it. I called it "No Fence Holds Me." And I told them what I was not, which was a member of any camp that ever drew a line and raised it tall. Grace hit me like a freight train when I was twenty-five and it changed the whole of how I think, and I went looking for the house that held it. I found a lot of houses. Every one of them had a fence around the yard. A list of what to say. A list of where a man was supposed to stop. And I could never stop where they stopped. So I never could move in.
For most of my life I carried that like a wound. A man with no camp is a lonely thing, and the camps are glad to tell you so. They have a word for you. Several words. And underneath all of them is the quiet accusation that if you will not stand inside anybody's wall, the problem must be you. Pride. Rebellion. A man who just will not submit.
But I want to tell you what I have learned out here in the open ground, because it is the best thing I know, and it is the reason the song does not end in grief.
I am not the first one out. Somebody came before.
Outside the gate
The book of Hebrews says something the fence-builders never seem to read out loud. Under the old law, the bodies of the sin offerings were not burned on the altar in the middle of the camp. They were carried out. "For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp" (Hebrews 13:11). The holiest sacrifice in Israel did not happen at the center of the town. It happened outside the wall, in the place where they took the things that did not belong.
And then the writer says the line that has held me together for years. "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate" (Hebrews 13:12). Outside the gate. They took my Lord out of the city to kill Him. Golgotha was not in the sanctuary. It was a hill beyond the wall, between two thieves, in the place where Jerusalem put the things it wanted gone. The Son of God was crucified outside the camp.
So when the writer of Hebrews turns to me and tells me what to do with that, he does not tell me to go find a better camp. He tells me to leave. "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach" (Hebrews 13:13). Go forth. Out. Unto Him. The command of God to His people is to walk out past the gate, because that is where Jesus is.
I did not leave the camps because I loved to leave. I left because the truth had already left, and the truth turned out to be a Person, and the Person was standing outside the wall the whole time, calling me to come where He was.
The most campless man who ever lived
Look at how He lived and you will see it. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). No house. No headquarters. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11). The Pharisees would not have Him. The Sadducees would not have Him. Rome would not have Him. Herod would not have Him. The synagogue cast out the man He had healed, and when they cast him out, do you know where Jesus went to find him? Outside. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him . . ." (John 9:35). The camp throws a man out the door, and Christ is already there in the street, waiting on him.
The most campless man who ever walked the earth was the Lord Jesus Christ. Every faction in Jerusalem had a fence, and every fence was built to keep Him on the far side of it. They succeeded. They put Him out, and they nailed Him up, outside the gate, and called it the end. "The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner"(Psalm 118:22). The builders are still inside their building. The Stone they threw out is the cornerstone of a city they cannot see.
So if you have spent your life on the outside of every wall, hear me. You are not in exile out here. You are in the best company a man could ever keep.
Campless is not a rebel's word
They will say a man with no camp is a man who would not bow. I understand why it looks that way from inside the fence. But it is the very opposite.
I did not refuse to submit. I bowed low to the text of Scripture, and I kept bowing, and the text would not stop walking. It walked me right up to the gate, and then it walked me through it, because the Author of the text had gone out that gate ahead of me and was calling from the other side. Following Christ all the way is not rebellion. It is the deepest obedience there is.
The fence is just the place where men stopped following Him. They found a doctrine they loved, a formula they could defend, a list they could police, and they built a wall around the spot and called it home. But Christ never stopped walking. He is not inside their wall. He is ahead of it. And no fence can hold the One you are following, which is the whole reason no fence can hold you.
That is the secret of the campless life. It is not that I love no house. It is that my home was never a camp in the first place. "For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come" (Hebrews 13:14). Read that verse slowly. It comes one line after the command to go outside the camp, and it tells you why the open ground is not homelessness. We have no continuing city down here, not the camps, not even my own little corner of eastern Kentucky. We are pilgrims, every one of us, walking toward a city whose builder and maker is God, following the Lamb who already went out the gate ahead of us, bearing the reproach we are now called to bear with Him.
The open ground
So I have come to love the open ground. Not because it is empty. Because it is not.
I used to think the loneliest place in the world was outside the fence. I had it exactly backwards. The loneliest place in the world is inside a wall that Christ has already left, singing hymns to a Savior who is standing out in the field behind you. The open ground is where He is. It is where the sin offering was carried, where the blood was spilled, where the gate could not hold Him, where He went to find the man the synagogue had thrown away. Out here the truth and I are both outside the town, and so is the Lamb of God, and the three of us are in good company.
No fence holds me. No fence ever could. And I will tell you the reason plainly now, the reason I only hinted at in the song. No fence ever held Him. They built the wall, and they put Him outside it, and on the third morning the gate of death could not hold Him either. I am only following Him where He already went.
Somebody came before. His name is Jesus. And He is not in the camp.
Grace and Peace,
Brandan
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