What does Tribe teach about condemnation?
Drawn from the message where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on condemnation starts with the recognition that two realities can be true at the same time. Pastor Brian taught from Isaiah 62, pointing out that the same verse describes Jerusalem as both forsaken and desolate and as the Lord's delight and his bride. He was clear that these are not sequential stages, as though one replaces the other once a person cleans up enough. They are genuinely parallel realities that coexist.
To press that further, Brian moved to Zechariah 3, where the high priest Jeshua stands before the angel of the Lord in filthy clothes while an accuser brings charges against him. The filthy clothes, he said, are a fair description of Jeshua's actual condition. People tend to manage that kind of awareness by comparing themselves to someone whose situation looks worse, but when the real standard of cleanliness is standing right there, the comparison stops working. What the passage shows, though, is that the Lord's response to Jeshua is not to agree with the accuser. The charges are real, and the clothes are filthy, and God moves anyway. Brian framed that dynamic with the words of Romans 8: "Who will declare me guilty? All of my enemies will be destroyed like old clothes that have been eaten by moths."
The practical weight of the teaching was that a person's failures do not revoke their standing before God. Brian put it plainly: "My sin doesn't change my righteous nature anymore than my goodness changed my sin nature." God's delight in his people is not earned by their performance and cannot be cancelled by their failure. The question the message kept returning to was which of those two realities a person chooses to live inside, because both are true at once.
Taught from Isaiah 62 · Zechariah 3:1-6 · Romans 8:33-34 · Isaiah 50:8-9
“My sin doesn't change my righteous nature anymore than my goodness changed my sin nature.”
From Choose Your Own Reality
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 9:4-6
4 Don’t say in your heart, after Yahweh your God has thrust them out from before you, saying, “For my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land”; because Yahweh drives them out before you because of the wickedness of these nations.
5 Not for your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, do you go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations Yahweh your God does drive them out from before you, and that he may establish the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
6 Know therefore, that Yahweh your God doesn’t give you this good land to possess for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 6, 2023 Choose Your Own Reality Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Isaiah 62, showing two parallel realities we live in: God's delight in us versus the enemy's accusations, and how we choose between them.