What does Tribe teach about shame and guilt?
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 shame and guilt is built around a single image from the story of Lazarus: grave clothes belong on dead people, not on people who have been raised to life. Brian Walker used John 11 to press on the question of why someone who has already been called out of the tomb would still be wearing the wrappings that were put on them after they died. The answer he kept returning to was that the world, and the enemy, actively try to put those old clothes back on. Brian says, "This world constantly tries to put those old grave clothes back on us." That pressure shows up as the voice telling someone they are a failure, that they have gone too far this time, that they are damaged goods, that God will not love them. Those voices, Brian said, only make sense if the person is still dead, and everyone who has invited Jesus in is not dead anymore.
The teaching does not stop at the declaration that those things are lies. Brian was honest that the heart and spirit change at salvation in a way the mind does not, at least not automatically. Romans 12:2 was central here: the renewing of the mind is ongoing work, not a one-time event. Our old neural pathways and patterns do not get rewritten the moment we are saved. That is not a reason for shame either; it is just the honest picture of what the Christian life actually looks like. The congregation itself added to this, with someone describing the practice of asking Jesus what He sees rather than agreeing with the voice of guilt, a posture Brian described as rooted in the reality that believers have access to something beyond the purely physical.
The practical anchor Brian pointed to was Romans 6, where Paul tells believers to consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word he kept coming back to was consider, the deliberate act of speaking truth over yourself and refusing to agree with what the enemy says. Brian says, "Only dead people belong in grave clothes." Anyone who has been made a new creation in Christ, and that newness is as real as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says it is, has no business staying wrapped in something that was never meant for a living person.
Taught from John 11:11-44 · Romans 6:6-11 · 2 Corinthians 5:17 · Romans 12:2 · John 8:36
“Only dead people belong in grave clothes.”
From Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside the Tomb
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- April 29, 2024 Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside the Tomb A Wyoming pastor walks through John 11, asking why alive people keep wearing grave clothes, and inviting the congregation to step out of old patterns and shame.
- April 28, 2024 Unwrapped: Finding Freedom Outside of the Tomb A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole explore John 11 and ask why so many Christians who have been made new still walk around wrapped in the grave clothes of guilt and shame.