[T] Lightfoot (on Ign. _ad Eph. v., et alibi_) has clearly shewn that Ignatius' use of [Greek: thysiasterion] is altogether mystical. He means not the Holy Table but (among other references) the Church of Christ as the sphere or place of spiritual sacrifice.
On a careful review of the words before us (verses 10-16), we are justified in the conclusion that the reference is, not to a Christian institution at all but precisely to the Hebrew ritual, in which Writer and readers still had part as members of _the nation_. The thing in view is an altar whose law was such that the sacerdotal "ministers ([Greek: hoi latreuontes]) of the Tabernacle" might not use its sacrifices for food. But why? Not of course because they were not Christians, but because the sacrifices in question presented there were to be wholly "burned," "burned without the camp." The entire thought moves within the limits of the typical ceremonial. It deals with the holocaust which even the sacrificer might handle only to commit it to the fire; the victim whose destiny was to be--not eaten by the priestly family but carried outside the camp as wholly devoted for the people's sins.
It is possible, within the lines of the Levitical ritual, to interpret in more ways than one the "altar" in question. It may be the great altar, regarded in its special use on the Atonement Day (Lev. xvi); not another structure than that used for other sacrifices, but that same altar regarded, for the moment, as if separated and alone, because of the awful speciality of the stern while merciful ritual of that great day. Or again, as it has been argued with learning and force[U], the reference may be to the altar of incense, the golden altar of the Holiest, on which the blood not only of the atonement victims but of all sin-offerings was sprinkled; and every sacrifice so treated was regarded as a holocaust; no part of it was reserved for food. But in either case the altar in question is not of the Church but of the Tabernacle. The "we" of ver. 10 is the community in its Hebrew rather than in its Christian character.
[U] By the Rev. James Burkitt, in _The Golden Altar: an Exposition of Hebrews xiii. 10, 11_.
So the whole thought centres itself in the supreme Sacrifice, as Antitype answering to type. Jesus is our holocaust, wholly sacrificed for our sins. His sacrifice involved in its awful ritual the shame and agony of rejection by His own, excommunication from "the camp" of the chosen. Then let the Hebrew believer, "receiving that inestimable benefit," be ready also to follow his Redeemer's steps in rejection and in shame. Let him also be prepared for casting out by priest and scribe. Let his yearning heart, with whatever anguish, inure itself to the thought that the beloved "city of his solemnities" is not the final and enduring Jerusalem. Let his "thoughts to heaven the steadier rise," as he looks, like Abraham before him, to "God's great town in the unknown land," where sits on high the Mediator of the New Covenant, the "Priest upon His throne."