What does Tribe teach about freedom from religion?
Drawn from the messages 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 freedom from religion starts with a question that runs through Matthew 12: how can two groups of people stand in the same place, hear the same words, and watch the same miracle, and yet walk away in completely opposite directions? Brian Zahn has pressed this question across two messages, using the disciples and the Pharisees as the clearest picture the Gospels give us of what religion looks like when it hardens against Jesus, and what freedom looks like when it does not.
Brian's answer reaches for 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, where Paul describes the knowledge of Christ as a fragrance that smells like life to those being saved and like death to those who are perishing. The religious spirit, in Brian's telling, is not simply ignorance or bad formation. It is an active posture of the heart that sees, protests, accuses, and eventually conspires. And the sobering part of his teaching is that indifference is not a third road out. It is, functionally, the same road the Pharisees were on. He points to Matthew 21:44, where Jesus says the stone will either break whoever falls on it or crush whoever it falls on, and he asks the room to find a third option in that verse. There is none. Freedom from religion does not come from keeping a respectful distance from Jesus. Brian says, "You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus."
The freedom the disciples walked in came from a different posture entirely. They admitted their hunger. They did not perform their piety. Brian draws the contrast carefully: proximity to Jesus is not the same thing as surrender to Jesus, and religion is precisely what fills the gap between the two. The only move that produces genuine freedom, in this teaching, is falling on the rock willingly, which means letting Jesus dismantle what you have built and being rebuilt by him. As Brian puts it, that is the direction of the person who can honestly say, "Thank you for smashing my life to pieces and dismantling everything that I had carefully constructed about my life."
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 · Matthew 21:44 · Hosea 6:6 · Luke 21:1-4
“You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus.”
From Smell Something
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place.
15 For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;
16 to the one a stench from death to death; to the other a sweet aroma from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 27, 2025 Smell Something Brian Hunter preaches on Matthew 12, asking why two groups witnessed the same Jesus and walked away so differently, and why there is no neutral response to him.
- January 26, 2025 Shhhh! Smell Something? Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show why two groups can witness the same miracle and walk away with opposite reactions to Jesus, and why neutrality is not an option.