THE COURTYARD WITH ITS ALTAR

Just as the courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem was holy and the sacrificial animals brought into it had to be perfect specimens, so the antitypical courtyard of the priests represented a condition of perfect, righteous human sonship before God. Jesus was a perfect human son of God when he presented himself for baptism in the Jordan River. God had transferred the perfect life of his Son to the womb of the virgin Mary. (John 17:5; Luke 1:35) Therefore Jesus could say to God:

“Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but you prepared a body for me. You did not approve of whole burnt offerings and sin offering. . . . Look! I am come (in the roll of the book it is written about me) to do your will, O God.”​—Heb. 10:5-7.

The apostle Paul then comments: “By the said ‘will’ we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.”​—Heb. 10:10.

God did not really want sacrifices and sin offerings of animals. (Heb. 10:8) God’s will was that a perfect human give his life as the atonement and the ransom price for mankind, who had lost life through the sin of their father Adam. The spiritual “altar” on which Jesus’ sacrifice was placed was therefore God’s “will.” Jesus’ sacrificial course began when he presented himself for baptism and was accepted by God. The spiritual “altar,” as well as the “courtyard,” were now realities​—in operation. The great antitypical Day of Atonement had now begun.

From the time of his baptism, Jesus walked in the antitypical “courtyard” superintending his human sacrifice to the death. Here he could be seen by the people of earth, as was true of the courtyard with its altar at the tent in the wilderness. But the earthly tabernacle had a screen at its front that shut out all view of the Holy compartment inside. The Holy represented a condition of greater sacredness than the courtyard did;