What does Tribe teach about law vs grace?
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 law and grace starts with a question Brian Hunter put to the room: why did the Pharisees, after watching Jesus heal a man's withered hand on the Sabbath, immediately begin plotting to kill him? The congregation worked through it together, and the answers kept circling the same center. The Pharisees had staked their entire understanding of right relationship with God on the Mosaic Law, which made Jesus not a wonder but a threat. Someone brought Romans 8:7 into the conversation, that the mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God and cannot submit to his law, and Brian read it aloud as an anchor for the whole series: the flesh does not drift away from God, it actively opposes him.
Brian is moving the series back and forth between Galatians and Leviticus, using Galatians as the interpretive lens. Galatians 2 makes the case plainly: no one is justified by observing the law but by faith in Christ. The destination Brian is pointing toward is Galatians 2:20, where Paul says his old self has been crucified with Christ and it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. To feel the weight of what that cost, Brian took the room into Leviticus 1, the detailed regulations for burnt offerings, letting the strangeness and the blood of those procedures sit with people. He grounded that in Exodus 40, where the glory of God fills the completed tabernacle and Moses himself cannot enter. That moment is the problem the whole sacrificial system exists to address: God is present, and sinful people cannot simply walk in.
The central truth Brian named for the series is this: Brian says, "For a life giving relationship with God, something has to die." Law and grace are not two roads to the same destination. The law makes clear what holiness requires and what stands in the way. Grace, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, is what actually deals with it. The Pharisees chose their own system over Jesus, and Brian pressed that same choice into the present, noting that every person faces the same Thunderdome question: when your will and God's will enter the arena together, only one can walk out.
Taught from Galatians 2:15-21 · Galatians 2:20 · Leviticus 1:1-17 · Romans 8:7 · Exodus 40:34-38
“For a life giving relationship with God, something has to die.”
From Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves
The passage taught · Exodus 33:7-11
7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it “The Tent of Meeting.” Everyone who sought Yahweh went out to the Tent of Meeting, which was outside the camp.
8 When Moses went out to the Tent, all the people rose up, and stood, everyone at their tent door, and watched Moses, until he had gone into the Tent.
9 When Moses entered into the Tent, the pillar of cloud descended, stood at the door of the Tent, and spoke with Moses.
10 All the people saw the pillar of cloud stand at the door of the Tent, and all the people rose up and worshiped, everyone at their tent door.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 17, 2025 Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves Brian Hunter opens a new series in Leviticus and Galatians, exploring what it really costs to live in relationship with God and why something always has to die.
- February 16, 2025 The Series: Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves A Jackson Hole pastor opens a series on Leviticus and Galatians, exploring why something must die for a life-giving relationship with God to begin.