What does Tribe teach about identity in christ?
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 identity in Christ starts with a single conviction that Brian Hunter returns to repeatedly: only the creator has the authority to define his creation. The question of who you are is not yours to answer, and it is not the world's to answer either. Drawing from Judges 6, Brian has pointed the congregation to Gideon, a man hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat underground where the wind cannot even do its work, whose self-assessment was that his clan was the weakest and he was the least. God's first word to him was not a corrective or a pep talk built on Gideon's record. He had no record. God greeted him as a mighty man of valor before Gideon had done a single thing to earn it. Brian used the image of a plane leaving the ground: gravity does not stop working, but a higher law overrides it. The things Gideon believed about himself were true at one level, and God was simply operating at a higher level of truth.
That same thread runs through the teaching on 1 John 3 and Ephesians 1. In those messages, Brian asked the congregation to sit with one image: if you lifted the sole of the boot of your heart, whose name would be written there? Using the Toy Story picture of Andy's name written on Woody's boot, he made the point that God does not write his name on the bottom of your heart until you surrender yourself into his hands, and when he does, that name is Yahweh, his proper name, not a generic title. The Holy Spirit is then the seal of that ownership, described in Ephesians 1:13-14 as the deposit and guarantee of an inheritance. Brian said the enemy's strategy runs in the opposite direction entirely: where God wants to magnify and develop the unique image he placed in a person, the enemy wants to suppress and deface it. Brian says, "You are God's unique poem. The stated goal of the enemy is to scribble and scratch that out."
The teaching is also careful about what identity is not. Brian has consistently separated identity from calling, from gifts, from ministry, and from vocation, because collapsing those categories makes it hard to hear any of them clearly. Identity is the more foundational question, and it has to be settled first. The clay does not get to tell the potter what it is, and neither does the world. Brian says, "Anybody or any person or any force that doesn't encourage you to be you very well could be a force of the enemy." At Tribe, the answer to the identity question is not a feeling or an achievement. It is a declaration God makes over a person before they have done anything to deserve it, and the weight of the whole series rests on that.
Taught from Judges 6:11-16 · 1 John 3:1-3 · Ephesians 1:3-14 · Isaiah 29:16 · Ephesians 3:17
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 9:16
16 For if I preach the Good News, I have nothing to boast about; for necessity is laid on me; but woe is to me, if I don’t preach the Good News.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- May 24, 2026 Your Calling: The Clue of the Callus A Wyoming pastor walks through Judges 6 and other Bible stories to help listeners discover their God-given calling and tell it apart from identity, gifts, and job.
- May 18, 2026 Identity Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6 to show how God named Gideon a mighty warrior before he had done anything, and what that means for how we see ourselves.
- July 28, 2025 Sealed and Branded Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Ephesians 1:13-14, exploring what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and why that identity matters more than any label the world puts on you.
- July 27, 2025 His Name Your Boot: Week 2 A Jackson Hole pastor leads his congregation through Ephesians 1 to explore what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and to live as God's own.
- July 21, 2025 What Great Love Brian Hunter asks a simple question: if someone looked at the sole of your heart's boot, whose name would they find written there?
- July 20, 2025 His Name on Your Boot A Jackson Hole pastor walks through 1 John 3:1-3 and asks one question: whose name is written on the sole of your heart's boot?
Mentioned along the way
- January 19, 2026 Israel Is Always on God's Heart Brian Hunter opens a new series on Israel, exploring why Scripture returns to this subject 3,500 times and what that means for how we understand God's heart.
- January 11, 2026 Know Your Roots A sermon from Tribe Church in Jackson Hole on Ephesians 3:12-19, exploring what it means to be rooted in Christ and where we tend to sink our roots instead.
- May 5, 2025 The Feast of First Fruits Brian Hunter walks through the Feast of First Fruits and shows how Jesus rising from the dead as the firstborn of a great coming resurrection changes everything about how we live now.
- April 28, 2025 The Feast of Unleavened Bread Brian Hunter teaches Tribe through the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread and what it means to be truly free from sin, not just intellectually, but in daily life.
- April 27, 2025 No Longer Slaves Brian Hunter walks through the Feast of Unleavened Bread to show why Jesus, not willpower, breaks the chains of sin and why the enemy has no real authority over you.
- December 8, 2024 Anointed to Untangle Brian Hunter preaches on anointing, royal identity, and what it means to carry God's presence into brokenness, drawing from Exodus 30 and Isaiah 32.
- May 22, 2023 Fighting in Sauls Armor Brian Hunter walks through 1 Samuel 17 and asks why so many people try to fight their real battles wearing armor that was never made for them.