Then He said to me: “Son of man, this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘These are the statutes for the altar on the day it is constructed, so that burnt offerings may be sacrificed on it and blood may be splattered on it:
This relates to the altar in this mystical temple, and that is mystical too; for Christ is our altar. The Jews, after their return out of captivity, had an altar long before they had a temple, Ezr 3:3. But this was an altar in the temple. Now here we have, I. The measures of the altar, Eze 43:13.
Commenting on Ezekiel 43:13-27
And he said unto me, son of man, thus saith the Lord God,.... This is the voice of the Lord continued, speaking out of the house to the prophet; see Eze 43:6, these are the ordinances of the altar: not what go before, concerning the measures of it, but what follow, concerning the sacrifices to be offered on it: in the day when they shall...
The sacrifices here are not mere commemorative, but propitiatory ones. The expressions, "blood" (Eze 43:18), and "for a sin offering (Eze 43:19, Eze 43:21-22), prove this. In the literal sense they can only apply to the second temple. Under the Christian dispensation they would directly oppose the doctrine taught in Heb. 10:1-18, namely, that Christ has by one offering for ever atoned for sin.